Zhu Jingtong was shocked. A manager at a games publisher in Shanghai, Zhu and her colleagues were blindsided. “We didn’t know anything beforehand,” she says. “We found out at the same time as everyone found out.” Xinhua, China’s national wire service, had just announced new limits on the time that Chinese children could spend playing online video games.
Those under the age of 18 can now only play for one hour, between 8pm and 9pm, on Fridays, weekends, and public holidays. These are by far the severest restrictions on game-playing of any country where internet access is widely available. Many online games in China require ID registration, and for minors signing in, the system logs the time spent playing. If a child exceeds the time limit, a window pops up, leaving little choice but to stop.
The rules impact every game published in China that can be downloaded or accessed online, affecting mobile games and PC games. (Console gaming remains a relatively tiny part of China’s enormous gaming scene.) Some 743.5 million people play games in China, according to market research firm Niko Partners, of which around 110 million are under 18.
“The restrictions were already strict,” says Zhu, referring to 2019 regulations that had already proscribed minors to playing 1.5 hours on any day, and three hours on holidays. “To push it even further, it’s really unexpected,” she says. “It’s going to hit the industry hard.” Zhu’s colleagues were scrambling to update their games’ backend, to ensure their titles complied with the new rules, which went into effect just a few days after the announcement.
The new measures are designed to prevent minors from becoming addicted to online games, which are a “widespread concern” that “the majority of parents agree with,” according to a document issued by Chinese authorities. The four-page announcement mentions “anti-addiction” or “addiction” nearly two dozen times in language that is targeted and repetitive, and says that “teenagers are the future of the motherland.”
The blow to gaming stocks was relatively mild after the announcement, as children are not a major source of revenue for gaming companies, and restrictions were already in place for minors. But analysts predict long-term consequences. “What we’ve learned from the historic console ban in China is that consoles remain a niche in the region, even now,” says Chenyu Cui, a senior games analyst for Omdia, a tech-focused market research firm.
“When these restricted younger players grow older it’s possible that games will not play as big a part in their consumption of entertainment media, meaning the industry – particularly mobile – could start shrinking after perhaps ten to 15 years.”
Daniel Ahmad, a senior analyst focused on China and Asia for Niko Partners, says these regulations are part of an ongoing trend to control the popularity of online games in China and is part of a wider push to more tightly regulate gaming for minors.
In recent years Beijing has sought to bring China’s sprawling online gaming ecosystem to heel with measures including formalising and strengthening ID systems, and boosting censorship controls. And the social impact of gaming, as it has grown, has come under increasing scrutiny.
These restrictions are also taking place amid a wider crackdown on China’s entertainment industry, which include punitive measures against online fan clubs and celebrity fan culture (such as the sale of merchandise and websites which rank celebrities), and on tech firms such as Tencent and DiDi. Analysts also predict that live-streaming and video apps will see greater government regulation to tackle “internet addiction,” in a national Marxist revival under Xi Jinping’s leadership.
In short, Beijing wants people to spend less time eyeing celebrities and content that could draw away their admiration. The revival included introducing “Xi Jinping Thought” into the national curriculum, from primary school up to university, so that “teenagers establish Marxist beliefs”, according to guidelines released by China’s Ministry of Education in 2018.
The recent crackdown on internet companies is another step in this re-emphasis as Xi promotes his vision of “common prosperity.” As Bloomberg reports, this policy – “one where the interests of investors take a distant third place to ensuring social stability and national security” – has enormous consequences, and has already wiped billions of dollars off the value of some of China’s biggest tech companies.
Ahmad also mentions the underreported issue of myopia in relation to the restrictions. According to official statistics, over half of children in China are short-sighted, and rates appear to be on the rise. In 2018 an official survey found that 72 per cent of children aged between 12 and 14 had myopia, an increase from 58 per cent in 2010. Causes of this have been attributed to children not spending enough time outdoors and too much time in front of screens, a growing problem around the world. In 2018 Xi declared myopia “a major issue related to the future of the country that we must attach great importance to and not allow to develop”.
Many in China will support the crackdown. “I think it’s great,” says Ji Liwei, a 34-year-old English tutor based in Beijing. “Most teenagers, especially boys, like to play video games, and they can’t focus on study or cultivate other hobbies.” Support is one thing – but will the restrictions have the desired impact of tackling perceived addiction to gaming? Chinese newspapers often report on examples of addiction which leads to “concern of the whole society over minors’ excessive gaming”, says Chungdi Zhang, an analyst for market research firm Ampere Analysis. “I think this new rule shows that the majority of Chinese society still has a bias against games, and parents overly blame games for problems arising in children's development, which became the main driver for the government's increasing regulation of the games industry,” Zhang adds.
China is not the first country in Asia to impose restrictions. South Korea enacted the so-called “Shutdown Law” in November 2011 to combat gaming addiction, which was designed to prevent under-17s from playing games between midnight and 6am. (The law was recently repealed as it was discovered to be ineffective as it didn’t apply to mobile games.) Officials in Japan are also worried about excessive gaming among children, which appears to be a growing problem. But the introduction of any restrictions is unlikely due to strong protections in Japan’s constitution to prevent government overreach.
And even in China the ban may be relatively easy to circumvent. Steven Jiang lives in Beijing and is in his second year of high school. The 16-year-old’s favourite games are Genshin Impact (developed by Shanghai’s miHoYo) and the enormously popular Honor of Kings (published by Tencent Games). Despite spending an average of four hours a day playing these games Jiang believes the restrictions are overly prohibitive. “Games are games, study is study,” he says. “Not everyone has lost their ability to control their time.” But perhaps more pertinently he says the restrictions don’t really affect him.
Jiang says he and his gamer friends – “mostly boys, some girls” – all use boosters. Also known as accelerators, many gamers in China use these VPN-like apps, which connect Chinese players to overseas servers, to get access to titles not released in China. So far the government appears to be turning a blind eye to the use of these boosters.
Ahmad also believes China’s gaming minors won’t be so easily constrained. “Kids are kids, they will continue to find loopholes,” he says. “This isn’t the end of gaming. The government will introduce regulations as they see fit, but it’s still a growth sector.”
As for Jiang, he thinks the government should allow children the freedom to develop their own ability to control their time. “It makes me relaxed,” he says, about his hobby, “and it’s a good way to socialise, playing with friends. Next year we’ll have the big test [the college entrance exam] and we will all try to give up games. We’re human – most of my friends we like to play. But studying is the first thing we need to do.”
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
