BEIJING: IT’S GAME OVER, KID
Cuts minors’ online play
China is banning minors from playing online video games for more than three hours per week — and prohibiting the practice altogether during school days.
In an effort to fight gaming addiction, children under age 18 will be allowed to play only from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and official holidays, China’s main state-run Xinhua media agency reported on Monday.
The restrictions are part of a broader crackdown on tech in the country and come less than a month after Chinese state media slammed online games as “spiritual opium” threatening to “destroy a generation.”
As part of the stringent rules, online-game companies will be required to register gamers “using their real identifications,” so kids will not be able to evade the ban by creating new accounts under fake names.
State administrators will “deal with companies that fail to put measures in place,” Xinhua reported, citing a document from China’s National Press and Publication Administration.
It was not immediately clear when the rules will take effect.
As part of a previous effort to combat video-game addiction, China imposed a much lighter cap on gaming hours in 2019.
Under the previous rules, gamers under 18 were allowed to play for 90 minutes per day on weekdays and three hours per day on weekends and holidays. They were also blocked from playing between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
Monday’s new rules — which cut minors’ allowed gaming time from a maximum of 13¹/2 hours to three hours most weeks — appeared to spook investors.
New York-traded shares of NetEase, a Chinese computer and mobile-game developer, were down 8.8 percent, at $84.59, when US markets opened on Monday, before closing at $89.62, down 3.4 percent. Shares of the more diversified tech giant Tencent closed down 1.1 percent, at $58.31.
Beijing’s tighter stance toward tech is also affecting social-media, delivery and ride-share companies.
Earlier this month, the Chinese government took a board seat and stake in a China-based subsidiary of TikTok maker ByteDance, leading for calls from at least one US senator for TikTok to be banned.
Beijing has also levied hefty fines against tech giants such as Alibaba in antimonopoly cases and has targeted Chinese companies looking to go public in the US, including the ride-hailing app Didi and the trucking-tech firm Full Truck Alliance, with probes shortly after their IPOs.