China further restricts game time for minors to curb game addiction

As reported by Daniel Ahmad, minors in China will be hit with more restrictive regulations intending to curb game addiction. The latest in targeted regulations state that minors are allowed to play games only for an hour every Friday, Saturday and Sunday between 8pm to 9pm.

This follows a previously more lenient 1.5 hours of play a day, with 3 hours during holidays. This is also not long after South Korea announced they will abolish their own version of such restrictions, as reported by the Korea Herald. South Korea will be utilizing the existing “choice system” in its place, wherein minors or their parents can designate hours to play games.

With a valid ID required, these minors registering for games will be restricted right from the get-go. Even if you’re not a minor, if you’re playing games on the Chinese server, you’re likely to go through even more hoops to verify your identity. If you’re playing through a bilibili account, you probably can move on just by proving that you’re of age, though this also means you would still need to provide the required personal identification to do so.

Whether this China policy will actually be effective in curbing game addition in minors will need to be seen. As it were, implementation of such a policy in South Korea was considered controversial, and had loopholes that could be easily manipulated.

The gaming industry in China have been under a lot of pressure, all things considered: from publishing to game licenses.

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