China limits the time that minors can spend playing video games to 15 hours per month

Chinese authorities seek to limit the hours that underage users dedicate to playing games video games during their school holidays and has imposed a limit of around 15 hours of gaming for a month.

This measure applies from this Wednesday, January 15, and will extend until next February 14, with the support of two of the largest video game development companies of Chinese origin, Tencent and NetEase.

China has developed this limitation to reduce the dependence on screens of young people and adolescents, a regulation that takes the baton of another imposed in August 2021, as recalled by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Then, the authorities of this country imposed a time limit for younger online game players of one hour a day during weekends – Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays – and holidays.

Now, China has chosen to bring together playing time to approximately 15 hours per month during the winter school holidays for these minors, a time to which the creators of League of Legends and Diablo Inmortal have adapted, according to the aforementioned media.

Last Thursday, Tencent noted that children under 18 years of age could play for up to 15 hours between January 13 and February 13, while NetEase announced that it would restrict this limitation to no more than 16 hours between January 15 and February 13. February 14.

While these video game companies have made a commitment to the Chinese government to prevent “excessive gaming” by young people, they have been using facial recognition for some time to detect players and ensure that children do not use adult accounts to bypass the limits.

In this sense, Tencent has noted in a WeChat publication that it has improved its procedure to detect and punish those who try to exceed the restrictions during the aforementioned period of time. To do this, it has created a “risk database,” which identifies accounts that show signs of having been lent by adults to minors, activating easy recognition to verify users.

Tencent first added this feature in Honor of Kings, a smartphone video game released in 2018. It then incorporated facial recognition in the battle royale Peacekeeper Elite. Likewise, NetEase noted in 2020 that it had added similar technologies to its video games.