China limits online game time for minors to three hours a week

The Chinese government has presented new rules for children playing online in the country. Game companies are only allowed to offer the services to minors on Friday, Saturday and Sunday between eight and nine o’clock in the evening. That equates to three hours of gaming per week.

Except on weekends, minors are allowed to game on public holidays between eight and nine o’clock in the evening, state news agency Xinhua writes on Weibo. The rules are intended to ‘protect the physical and mental health of children’ and are mainly intended to combat game addiction. The rules are stricter than those of 2019, when gaming was limited to one and a half hours a day or three hours on holidays.

Game companies are only allowed to offer online gaming to users who have registered with their real name. This makes it possible to check whether a gamer is a minor. Game company Tencent indicated earlier this year that it also wanted to use facial recognition for this.

The game companies will be little affected by the move, reports financial news agency Bloomberg. Tencent, one of the largest Chinese game companies, says that Chinese minors now account for less than three percent of sales. In 2019, restrictions were also imposed on the expenditure that minors can make in online games. The restrictions do not apply to adults.

In China there is not only strict controls on games for minors. The government also determines which games and consoles are allowed to appear in the country. Also, games are not allowed to collect more information about users than is necessary.