Tencent cuts kids’ playing time on flagship game Honour of Kings to appease Beijing
- Gamers under the age of 18 will have their playing time limited to one hour on regular days and two hours on public holidays
- Honour of Kings was the first video game in the world, on any platform, to average more than 100 million users a day
Gamers under the age of 18 will have their playing time limited to one hour on regular days and two hours on public holidays, according to new rules announced by Tencent that come into effect from Wednesday. These minors were previously allowed to play Honour of Kings up to 1.5 hours on a regular day and three hours on holidays, which followed a government directive issued in late 2019.
Teenagers will also be prohibited from playing the game between 10pm and 8am, a move that goes beyond the central government’s mandatory limits for minors to engage in gaming.
Tencent said the new measures are designed to “further enhance protection of minors”.
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Tencent narrows kids’ playing time on video games labelled ‘spiritual opium’ by Chinese state media
“We hope we can help children develop a healthy gaming habit, and we are doing our best to reduce family problems stemming from kids’ gaming activities,” the Shenzhen-based internet giant said.
The piece was later deleted online and then republished by the newspaper, but with the references to “spiritual opium” removed from both the headline and body.
Although Tencent is no stranger to controversy, the report has again put concerns about gaming addiction among minors in China back under the public spotlight.
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“Official concerns about reducing play time and spending of minors have already been addressed with myriad systems, which can be more aggressively rolled out for modestly higher compliance costs,” the analysts said.
In the fourth quarter last year, Tencent indicated that only 6 per cent of its gaming business sales came from players under the age of 16, according to the Bloomberg Intelligence report. “So the sales impact of such efforts [to cut down playing time by minors] may be muted,” the analysts said.
Honour of Kings also raked in US$2.6 billion in revenue from in-app purchases last year, making it the world’s most profitable game, according to estimates from app tracking firm Sensor Tower in December.
Following the early sell-off on Tuesday, Tencent’s shares were up 5 per cent in the morning session in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
