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An avatar is displayed in an arranged photograph of the Honour of Kings mobile game, developed by Tencent Holdings Ltd., in Hong Kong, China Photo: Bloomberg

Tencent employs facial recognition to detect minors in top-grossing mobile game Honour of Kings

Tencent’s stricter controls over underage gamers come amid Beijing’s call to protect children’s health, with the government blaming the country’s widespread myopia on the playing of video games

Tencent

Tencent Holdings, the world’s top-grossing games publisher, will use facial recognition technology to detect minors amid tighter scrutiny by the Chinese government over concerns excessive video gaming is hurting public health.

Tencent’s blockbuster mobile title, Honour of Kings, will be the first to test the technology, with some 1,000 new users in Beijing and Shenzhen selected to verify their identities through camera checks, the company said in a statement on Saturday.

In mid-September, Tencent found that almost half of the 600 game-playing minors and their parents who took part in its survey doubted facial-recognition checks in games, according to the statement. Tencent said it hoped to see how to use facial recognition and unearth problems through the scheme.

A child plays the game “Honour of Kings” by Tencent at home in Dezhou, Shandong province, China July 2, 2017.

Last month, Tencent launched a system to verify the identities of Honour of Kings players by cross-referencing with public security databases. The company said it was the first time such data has been used by the gaming industry to screen users.

Tencent’s stricter controls over underage gamers come amid Beijing’s call to protect children’s health, with the government blaming the country’s widespread myopia on the playing of video games. Last week, the company added a feature to its popular video app that blurred the image if the viewer got too close. That followed a series of measures introduced last year to restrict play time for Honour of Kings’ young users, after a top state newspaper criticised the game as “poison”.

It is unclear when the facial recognition checks will be available for Honour of Kings, which has 200 million users, or if and when the system will expand to cover other Tencent titles. A company spokesman had no further comment when contacted.

Honour of Kings was the highest-grossing mobile game of 2017 with US$1.9 billion in revenue, according to research firm SuperData. Like the PC title League of Legends, the battle-arena game pits two teams of five against each other, with the first to demolish the other’s base the winner.

Shares in Tencent have plunged about 20 per cent this year after the Shenzhen-based company posted lower-than-expected gaming revenue in the most recent quarter. That was in part blamed on a months-long freeze in game approvals, triggered by a government reshuffle started in March.

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