China’s tighter video game restrictions spring a few leaks during country’s long holiday as kids seek online fun
- An August state media article called video games ‘spiritual opium’, and in September authorities moved to limit gaming time for minors to three hours a week
- Minors are still able to either steal their parents’ national IDs to obtain an adult gaming account, or pressure them into handing over the IDs voluntarily
About a month after Beijing restricted kids to playing video games only three hours a week, the tougher rules have been put to the test by “Golden Week”, a seven-day holiday following China’s National Day. And the results have been mixed.
Kids have continued to use workarounds such as using their parents’ accounts to bypass various game age limit checks, although some have cut down their playing time and spent the extra hours watching more short videos, according to multiple interviews the South China Morning Post conducted with both kids and parents over the holiday season.
For Evan Liang, a 14-year-old middle school student using a pseudonym to protect his identity, China’s tougher rules have not disrupted his gaming habits much. “Most kids have access to adult accounts … I do,” he said. “People have secretly registered adult accounts by stealing and using their parents’ national IDs.”
An August state media article called video games “spiritual opium”, and in September authorities moved to limit gaming time for minors to three hours a week, only between 8pm and 9pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays. The measures have knocked billions of the market value of leading domestic gaming firms, such as Tencent Holdings and NetEase.
Regulators have purged many unapproved games from the market and both Tencent and NetEase have made huge efforts to rework their offerings to meet the harsher regulatory environment, in terms of both gaming content and restrictions.
Critically though, implementation of government gaming restrictions relies on the domestic industry’s real-name registration system, which verifies a user’s identity against their national ID, stored on a police database.
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In response to Beijing’s crackdown, most of China’s gaming giants have said minors only account for a tiny portion of their revenue, although they have not said how many kids were gaming using adult accounts.
In its latest quarterly report in August, Tencent said that players under 16 accounted for just 2.6 per cent of its gross gaming receipts in China, with those under 12 accounting for just 0.3 per cent. Meanwhile, Bilibili said in its earnings report that minors contributed only 1 per cent of the company’s gaming revenue.
In an effort to keep adult accounts out of the hands of kids, regulators have taken a closer look at account rental websites. However, it seems that minors are still able to either steal their parents’ national IDs to obtain an adult account, or pressure them into handing over the IDs voluntarily.
Evan’s sister, 27-year-old Pauline Liang also speaking under a pseudonym to protect her identity, noticed her brother had played a lot of video games over the holiday, including hits such as Honour of Kings and LifeAfter, and said she was unaware he had access to an adult account.
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“He played quite a few different games,” said Pauline. “But to be fair, kids like him have a lot of time during the holiday. They have a lot of homework but besides studying, there isn’t much entertainment at home except playing games.”
Ada Zeng, mother of a grade-two boy, said that while Beijing’s regulations had limited her son from playing some of the big online games, he turned to some of the many other substitutes available.
Currently, many console games or single-player games in China, many of which are brought in by parallel importers or smugglers, are not subject to the same restrictions.
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“My kid used to play some Minecraft,” said Zeng. “Now he is playing some games that don’t require users to register. And sometimes he just ends up playing the Nintendo Switch.”
However, Mia Zuo, mother of a grade-three girl, said she was pleased overall with Beijing’s new regulations.
She said that her daughter had been hooked on SAKURA School Simulator, an online video game made by Japan’s Garusoft Development, but that it had been unavailable for downloads ever since the crackdown began.
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SAKURA School Simulator is not licensed for release in China according to the website of industry regulator the National Press and Publication Association.
“If the government and companies can regulate video games from their end, that sounds good to me. That spares us the trouble of us worrying about our kids playing games,” she said.
But Zuo said that her daughter now spends a lot more time watching short videos on ByteDance’s Douyin, China’s biggest short video platform and TikTok’s domestic sister app. However, Douyin has also moved to limit users under the age of 14 years old to just 40 minutes of use per day in September, just weeks after the video game time limits were introduced.
Additional reporting by Pearl Liu
