If you’re under the age of 18 in China, you’ll now have a time limit on how much time you may spend playing online video games on your free time. For most weeks of the year, Chinese officials have reduced the amount of time to around three hours each week, allowing gaming platforms to sell online gaming to minors only during the hours of 8-9pm on Fridays, weekends, and public holidays.
The news was announced by the Chinese state news outlet Xinhua, citing a notice from the National Press and Publication Administration.
This isn’t the first time China has attempted to limit how much time youngsters spend playing video games: The new regulations are actually an extension of the 2019 limits. That year, officials imposed laws requiring all online game user accounts to be registered with their true names and legitimate identity information, as well as a one-hour play limit for non-logged-in guests. The restrictions also prohibited gaming companies from allowing minors to play between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., and imposed a daily maximum of 13 hours on holidays and 1.5 hours on non-holiday days.
The rules come in the wake of China’s intensifying crackdown on tech firms. Tencent is the world’s largest video game provider and China’s most valuable publicly traded firm.
Tencent had hastened to respond to rising criticism after a state-run tabloid referred to video games as “spiritual opium” and mentioned a Tencent game that had people gaming for up to eight hours per day. The next day, Tencent Holdings’ stock sank by 7%. According to the report, “62.5 percent of underage Internet users in the country frequently play online games.” On August 3, the corporation said that it would limit youngsters’ gaming time and prohibit children under the age of 12 from making in-game purchases.
According to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center, China’s gaming sector will generate $43.2 billion in revenue by the end of 2020, increasing 20.71 percent from the previous year. A stunning 518 million people played online games.