The Communist Party of China’s Central Publicity Department announced that, come September, all Chinese gamers will be required to log in using their real names to play video games.
In 2019, the State Administration of Press and Publications introduced limitations on video games for Chinese citizens under the age of 18, restricting children to a maximum of 90 minutes of daily gaming time on weekdays and three hours on holidays - with strict bounds of playtime between 8am and 10pm. This was done in an effort to combat mobile gaming addiction, and now, the government will be able to more strictly enforce these limitations with the addition of real name verification to all player login processes.
The announcement was made at the China Digital Entertainment Expo, ChinaJoy 2020, on July 30. Feng Shixin, the Deputy Director of the Publications Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department, said the preliminary plan was to be in full force at a national level by September, when gaming enterprises will be set up with the authentication system in batches. The government will enforce stronger supervision on online gaming and increase penalties for those who fail to follow the regulations. There has yet to be word on what the penalties will be, or how supervision will increase past the real name authentication.
The world’s top gaming enterprise, Tencent, which is based in China is ahead of the curve, having already incorporated real name authentication to some of their games dating back to late 2018. This was introduced with their title, Honour of Kings, which would check player identities against public security records to restrict playtime. This was later expanded to their other offered titles, including PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and League of Legends. China has over 600 million mobile gamers, and with Tencent dominating the mobile gaming industry, it’s likely that this new authentication won’t seem like too drastic a change for most players. However, with newer, harsher penalties for violations, many underage players will likely stray away from cheating the authentication system, which many children have been doing in China for years, using fake IDs and fake voices.
China has always been incredibly strict with regulations surrounding video games. Video game consoles could not be sold in China from 2000 to 2014, all video game releases must be manually approved by the government and approvals were frozen for almost all of 2018. In April of this year, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was banned in the country due to players creating anti-government custom patterns, while Plague Inc. was banned in China after a spike in player totals following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With all of China’s gaming history considered, this incredibly strict new system sadly doesn’t come as much of a surprise.
Source: Xinhua
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