Now Chinese youngsters have to trick the system to have more than three hours of weekly playtime…

The People’s Daily, one of China’s most prominent state media newspapers, has pointed out that players under age 18 can still play outside the allocated hours they are allowed to (8-9 PM Friday-Sunday, including public holidays), asking for these loopholes to be closed. The article was translated by Reuters: “On some online trading platforms, there are game account rental and sales businesses, users can bypass the supervision by renting and buying accounts and play online games without restrictions.

This means that there are still loopholes for teenagers to enter online gaming, which is worthy of attention,” Reuters wrote. According to People’s Daily, loopholes should be closed to prevent addiction…

The principal mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party says families and schools should also comply with the new restrictions because they believe that many young people are using their parents’ accounts to play games, perhaps registering using their details (e.g. name, date of birth…), while adults have no such restrictions. And video game companies (e.g. Tencent and NetEase, two of the most prominent players ‘abroad’) are being asked to actively fulfil their responsibility to the community so that the next generation (population-wise) can experience healthy growth.

Young people are even limited in their spending. Those aged 8 to 15 years have the RMB equivalent of about 30 USD per month to spend, while those aged 16 to 18 years have double that. So not only in terms of playing time but also in terms of microtransactions, the state party has set stringent limits.

62.5% of young people in China play online games regularly, and 13.2% spent more than two hours a day playing them before the restrictions stepped in. That’s why the Chinese state media say there are too many short-sighted people with possible mental health problems. (And US experts say the NetEase/Tencent duo may be too powerful, and that’s what Xi Jinping wants to prevent…)

And young people who are over-addicted to games have been sent to quit-smoking camps for a few years. Here they receive ideological and military training, and sometimes even beatings in addition to solitary confinement…

Source: Gamesindustry, Qubit