You can only play two hours a day

Chinese market-leading tech giant Tencent has imposed a new restriction on its flagship title, the ultra-popular “Honor of Kings”. Now, under 18s can only play a maximum of two hours per day.

Some children can spend all day glued to their screens. A phenomenon long criticized in China for its negative consequences: reduced vision, impact on school results, lack of physical activity or risk of addiction.

A sample of the weight of the video game market in this country of 1,400 million inhabitants is that it generated 17,000 million euros in business volume in the first half of 2021 alone.

Regulations already prohibited minors from playing online between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., but when an article in an official economic journal in early August called video games “mental opium”, the industry began to fear a further tightening of regulations from the authorities to digital companies.

The article also highlighted Tencent and its popular game “Honor of Kings”, a hit in China with more than 100 million daily active users.

Thus, stock market investors have emptied the shares of the giants of the sector (Tencent, NetEase, Bilibili …), which caused prices to fall.

Faced with this pressure, the group, which already imposed limits on playing time by facial recognition so that the under-18s do not play at night, has made the rules even tougher. From now on, they will only be able to play “Honor of Kings” for one hour per day during school hours and two hours during holidays. After this period of time, the game crashes.

For many young people, this is an excessive strategy. For Li, 17, who refused to give his last name, the measure is “distressing”, because he believes that adolescents of his age, almost of age and therefore more responsible, can limit their playing time on their own.

However, some clever people have found the solution: “with the help of an adult account, I play two to three hours a day and, of course, from 10 o’clock in the evening”, laughs a 17-year-old player who wishes to remain anonymous.

But was the frantic reaction of the markets justified by the magazine article?

“Stock market investors overreacted and the media got out of hand”said Ether Yin, analyst at Trivium China.

“Since 2018, the government wants to prevent children from becoming addicted to games,” he says, and stresses that this trend is not new, so other video game companies are expected to create their own restrictions in the coming weeks. .

For now, the measures only apply to this Tencent game, but most parents welcome the new restrictions, although some who enjoyed playing with their children have also been affected.