Chinese Gaming Time Limit

Added • Updated about a year ago

Added by Philipp • Updated about a year ago by andcallmeshirley

Category: Event Status: Submission Year: 2019 Origin: China Region:

Type: Law,

Tags: china, gaming, esports, 18 years, minors, limit, time, ban, limitation, money, curfew, mark kern,

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News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle The Guardian view Columnists Letters Opinion videos Cartoons Opinion Games Why the industry should heed China's crackdown on video game players Alex Hern While the west is unlikely to follow the three-hour gaming limit for children, developers would be unwise to dismiss it too quickly Sat 4 Sep 2021 11.00 EDT

KOTAKU" Please, Free Me From The Bad Takes About China's Gaming Restrictions There's no 'one size fits all' take when you're dealing with millions of diverse gamers By Sisi Jiang | 14 minutes ago | Alerts

Mark Kern @Grummz China is now limiting how long under 18 can play games. 90 minutes on weekdays, 3 hrs on weekends. Also limiting how much you can spend. This is really going to dent the China gaming market 2:11 PM - 6 Nov 2019

Mark Kern @Grummz This, of course, means that Chinese investments in games will grow overseas, they look to outside markets to make up the difference. Expect a LOT of China investments all across the games industry. 2:14 PM - 6 Nov 2019

Mark Kern @Grummz All game developers will bear the cost of this. They have to mod their games to track and limit user time in China. Most already do, for prior requirements. But any new games will have to build this limiting stuff in Indies get hit the most. mike @maulsrobotlegs Replying to @DarioOrs @Grummz In China and Korea your online account is tired to your real world id. You basically need to provide your social security number before you can make an account. 2:35 PM 6 Nov 2019

Overview • Background • Online Reactions • Search Interest •

Overview

Chinese Gaming Time Limit refers to a set of guidelines introduced by the Chinese authorities on November 5th, 2019, which limit the amount of time Chinese citizens below the age of 18 are allowed to spend playing video games and restrict the amount of money they can spend on in-game transactions.

Background

On November 5th, 2019, the Chinese government released a notice containing a set of guidelines aimed at tackling video game addiction in the country, with Xinhua News Agency reporting on the news on the same day.^[1] The guidelines are as follows:

Those under the age of 18 are banned from playing video games between 22:00 and 08:00;
Those under the age of 18 are allowed to play 90 minutes on weekdays and 3 hours on weekend days and holidays;
Gamers in the 8-16 age bracket can spend up to 200 yuan ($28.5) on in-game transactions per month;
Gamers in the 16-18 age bracket can spend up to 400 yuan ($57) on in-game transactions per month.
A real-name registration system is to be implemented, requiring companies to verify ages of gamers against a national database

Online Reactions

In the following days, the news was covered by multiple news outlets globally, including articles by BBC,^[2] ABC^[3] and The New York Times.^[4]

On November 6th, game developer Mark Kern posted several tweets about the development,^[5]^[6]^[7] with one post gaining over 460 retweets and 2,300 likes in one day (shown below). A repost of the tweet to /r/KotakuInAction subreddit received over 590 upvotes in one day.^[8]