The new mental health initiative, Healthy China 2030 will crackdown violent, pornographic, or gambling video games.

Technode reports about the Chinese Communist Party’s Healthy China 2030 directive, which will try to improve the mental health in the country. They will try to do so through various measures that will affect schools, mental health organizations, counselling, and educational initiatives. However, the program also mentions video games. The program believes the increase in mental disorders among minors is due to violent and pornographic content, and that they should be reduced.

The initiative is spearheaded by twelve different Chinese Communist Party government departments, including the National Health Commission, the Publicity Department, and the National Radio and Television Administration. Part of the plan mentions increased supervision of online content and games, and those that have online gambling, pornography, or „bloody violence” will be gone in the crackdown efforts.

However, we already wrote in November that restrictions have been put in place for minors, decreasing their playtime, they can’t access games between 10 PM and 6 AM, and they have to register with their real-life information and ID, plus their monthly spending in games (microtransactions) have been restricted depending on their age. There’s also the new process that was brought in last year: the censors give only a limited number of license approvals for games per year, which are required to officially enter the Chinese market with potential profit.

And here comes the expansion of the Chinese tech giants (such as NetEase or Tencent) into the international games industry. Yesterday, we wrote about how Tencent invested in PlatinumGames so that the Japanese studio could be independent and potentially go into self-publishing. Via the Chinese presence, their influence could increase…

…and thus, the Chinese rules could be affecting international games, too.

Source: Gamesindustry

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