China on Monday announced a drastic cut to children’s online gaming time to just three hours a week during term time, the latest move in a broad crackdown on tech giants in the world’s biggest gaming market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gamers under 18 will only be allowed to play online between 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, state news agency Xinhua said, in what it described as a bid to curb addiction in the gaming-crazy nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gamers are required to use their ID cards when registering to play online, to ensure minors don’t lie about their age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On school holidays, children will be allowed to play a little longer, with the allocated time set at 60 minutes per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Gaming addiction has affected studies and normal life… and many parents have become miserable,” the National Press and Publication Administration said in a statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies are prohibited from offering gaming services outside the stipulated hours, although the statement did not make it clear how rule-breakers would be punished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An earlier restriction in place since late 2019 banned late-night games and restricted players to just 90 minutes of playtime on weekdays and three hours on weekends and holidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China’s Communist rulers have been reining in big tech and other powerful sectors that draw hundreds of millions of consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaming seems to be the latest target for regulators, hit by a raft of rules introduced in recent months to weed out the excesses of the culture among Chinese youth, from worsening eyesight to online addiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The industry — which made revenue of 130 billion yuan ($20 billion) in the first half of this year according to the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association — has been slammed in menacing state media reports in recent days, with one article labelling games as “spiritual opium”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July Chinese tech giant Tencent rolled out a facial recognition “midnight patrol” function to root out children masquerading as adults to get around a government curfew on underage gamers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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China on Monday announced a drastic cut to children’s online gaming time to just three hours a week during term time, the latest move in a broad crackdown on tech giants in the world’s biggest gaming market. Gamers under 18 will only be allowed to play online between 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, state news agency Xinhua said, in what it described as a bid to curb addiction in the gaming-crazy nation. Gamers are required to use their ID cards when registering to play online, to ensure minors don’t lie about their age. On school holidays, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[550,70,544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-health","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n