TECH NEWS – The Chinese tech giant is serious about not allowing kids to play at night in secret.

The company has thus strengthened with facial recognition technology: after 10 PM (and before 8 AM), in mobile games, their identity has to be identified via the new tech, which would be nothing more but another step in a continuously tightening regulation, when it comes to the youngsters’ playtime allowance. Until now, sixty Tencent games, such as Game for Peace or Honor of Kings got the facial recognition update, but over time, more games will get this update.

Thus, the kids will not have any way to use shortcuts to still play the games when they aren’t supposed to, as their phones’ camera will recognize their age and identity. And it has been a long process because, in 2019, the Chinese government introduced a new set of restrictions that mandated Chinese gaming companies implement real-name verification systems as well as limits to how long children can play and how much they can spend. However, some moves could have been dodged, which is why Tencent brought in this Big Brother-like move.

According to the Chinese government, these regulations are meant to curb gaming addiction, but there are concerns that this move could be tied to the Chinese social credit system, where some citizens can be penalized for a variety of behaviours deemed unsuitable by the government (not sorting their recycling properly is one such thing).

This could be interesting in the future, as Tencent happens to be one of the Chinese companies that aggressively spread abroad (think of the companies where they have a varied percentage of stake: Epic Games, PlatinumGames, Riot Games, Yager, or even Ubisoft), so their power might be slowly impacting games in the West, although, in America, freedom is not something that the players will be willing to let go.

We have no idea if the camera footage is recorded while playing, for example…

Source: PCGamer