Because parents can’t be parents anymore. The government ARE the parents
Because parents can’t parent, they let the government do their jobs for them, and as an authoritarian country, why would they resist?
A few months ago, China heightened restrictions for minors to play online games in order to combat video game and/or gambling addiction. They have already requested multiple conglomerates and video game developers like Tencent to inject facial recognition into their games to confirm the identity of the user and ensure the one playing is not a minor. Now they have added another rule to this: anyone below 18 can only play 3 hours per week. And no, you read it; PER WEEK not PER DAY. This takes effect tomorrow, 1st September 2021.
The restrictions forces companies like Tencent, publisher of games like Pokemon Unite and League of Legends, and NetEase which has developed games like Rules of Survival, to restrict minors from playing from 8pm to 9pm on Fridays, public holidays and weekends. This is far worse since they only have an hour of playtime. This was also in effect thanks to the 2019 restriction, which allows only up to 1.5 hours of playtime at most.
Chinese users also have to register using their real birth details, which certainly is an issue on privacy. On the business side, a huge profit loss is expected since there will be less or no children taking their parents’ credit card and spend thousands of money without knowing their dire consequences
This ruling is the strictest one to date and will essentially wipe out most spending from minors, which we note was already extremely low,” said Daniel Ahmad, an analyst at Niko Partners.
Currently, NetEase shares are down by 8%. In addition, Tencent has responded to the limitations. “Tencent expressed its strong support and will make every effort to implement the relevant requirements of the Notice as soon as possible,” the company says.
Source: TechCrunch, CNBC, Bloomberg (may be paywalled)
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