Gaming Rules in China
Gaming is big business, and we don’t mean sports betting or lotteries, but on-line gaming. As both a panacea and a nightmare for parents, assumedly idle time is filled with hand-held devices, consoles, PCs and smartphones being twisted, turned, pushed, swiped and generally attacked while battles rage, respawning occurs, civilizations are built and destroyed, and super teams are created that could never exist in real life. Statistics on the gaming industry vary considerably with the high end at ~2.9b players in the global market generating ~$176b in revenue this year, with the Asia/Pacific region having the largest share at over 7 times the number of gamers in the US, but China’s most recent set of rules could put a bit of a dent in those numbers.
The National Press & Publication Administration, the agency that regulates the distribution of all publications in China under the auspices of the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, has issued a notice entitled “Notice on Further Strict Management and Practically Preventing Minors from Indulging in Online Games”. While we have not seen the actual notice, the agency has summarized the content as follows:
The age of consent in China is 14 but most game companies have already implemented their own restrictions that vary from 12 years old to 8 years old and lesser limitations on those between 12 and 18 years old, but there are already adult gaming accounts that are available for rental, meaning it can be ‘rented’ by anyone who has the account password, which gets changed for each ‘renter’, with the account holder and the ‘manager’ sharing the rental fee of 2 yuan ($0.31) per hour. In some cases you don’t even need a password, only a QR code, which is supplied by the manager, and applications that give access to available rental accounts are available in a number of on-line stores. ~18% of the Chinese population is 14 or younger.
That said, a report from Tencent (700.HK) indicated that in July of this year an average of 13.6m minor accounts were forced off-line by their system as they triggered the company’s 1.5 hour play limit and 10,000 accounts triggered facial recognition verification during the game payment process, with 92.4% of those for ‘failure to verify’ rules. There are still companies that allow authentication for those that do not have their ID numbers, but we expect it will be a relatively short time before those re able to remain outside of the new restrictions.. While the onus for maintaining the welfare of gaming minors falls primarily on game companies, who would likely feel the wrath of the government when violations are discovered, the rules do acknowledge that the responsibility also falls to the game platform, parents, and schools, although little is specified as to how such rules be implemented outside of the game companies, which likely means additional rules going forward.
The National Press & Publication Administration, the agency that regulates the distribution of all publications in China under the auspices of the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, has issued a notice entitled “Notice on Further Strict Management and Practically Preventing Minors from Indulging in Online Games”. While we have not seen the actual notice, the agency has summarized the content as follows:
- All on-line game companies can only provide minors with 1 hour of service from 8PM to 9PM on Friday Saturday, Sunday, and holidays.
- No on-line services to minors can be provided at any other time and real-name registration for user accounts is required.
- No service is allowed to any unregistered user at any time
- The implementation of such measures will require strengthening supervision and inspection in order to prevent minors from indulging in online games and to deal with online game companies that have not strictly implemented these rules in accordance with laws and regulations.
The age of consent in China is 14 but most game companies have already implemented their own restrictions that vary from 12 years old to 8 years old and lesser limitations on those between 12 and 18 years old, but there are already adult gaming accounts that are available for rental, meaning it can be ‘rented’ by anyone who has the account password, which gets changed for each ‘renter’, with the account holder and the ‘manager’ sharing the rental fee of 2 yuan ($0.31) per hour. In some cases you don’t even need a password, only a QR code, which is supplied by the manager, and applications that give access to available rental accounts are available in a number of on-line stores. ~18% of the Chinese population is 14 or younger.
That said, a report from Tencent (700.HK) indicated that in July of this year an average of 13.6m minor accounts were forced off-line by their system as they triggered the company’s 1.5 hour play limit and 10,000 accounts triggered facial recognition verification during the game payment process, with 92.4% of those for ‘failure to verify’ rules. There are still companies that allow authentication for those that do not have their ID numbers, but we expect it will be a relatively short time before those re able to remain outside of the new restrictions.. While the onus for maintaining the welfare of gaming minors falls primarily on game companies, who would likely feel the wrath of the government when violations are discovered, the rules do acknowledge that the responsibility also falls to the game platform, parents, and schools, although little is specified as to how such rules be implemented outside of the game companies, which likely means additional rules going forward.
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