China is flexing its authority over its citizens and taking over for parents who aren’t keeping an eye on how much time their children spend playing video games online. The country’s government is doing this by taking steps to severely limit the number of hours that children (any citizen under the age of 18) are allowed to spend playing online each week.
The new restrictions will be kicking on on September 1st (tomorrow) and will limit them to only one (1) hour (specifically between the times of 8 pm and 9 pm) of online play every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, as well as holidays. These same restrictions apply to companies behind these online games, requiring them to enforce these new requirements on their users and preventing them from being able to access these games outside of the dedicated times.
Gamers are also required to register with each system using their real name so that they can effectively be tracked, preventing them from trying to get around these restrictions. This, of course, wouldn’t be public information (they will still be playing behind their usernames for everyone else to see).
At the moment, it seems as though the restrictions apply to Chinese companies, although the country may seek to apply pressure to international video game companies as well–which would be an incredibly difficult task to achieve without strong backlash and without damaging the relationships with these companies.
It seems the companies will be the ones held liable for enforcing this as there doesn’t seem to be any language leaning toward punishment against the gamers directly. So there will likely be fines and other penalties enforced against (Chinese) companies that do not properly comply.
It’s moments like these that we (here) are thankful for democracy. This isn’t to say the world doesn’t have a problem with addiction when it comes to some of these games. There just might be better paths that can be taken to accomplish a solution for it all. Thankfully, China is also seeking some of these routes as well, by expanding education about video game addiction for parents, schooled, and other influential members in a child’s life.
