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Close to two decades ago, China recognized that gaming could potentially be addictive and as such, they decided to try and curb addiction by placing a ban on certain games and consoles. Eventually those bans got lifted, but it seems that China could be considering imposing new types of restrictions aimed at minors.
According to the reports, China is looking to set curfews for gaming for minors, where not only would it restrict how many hours gamers can play a week, but also how much they can spend. In this curfew, gamers who are aged under 18 will be banned from playing games between the hours of 10PM at night until 8AM in the morning. They will also be limited to playing 90 minutes of games during the weekdays, and 3 hours during weekends and holidays.
There will also be a limit imposed on how much gamers can spend on their games, where gamers aged 8-16 years old can spend up to 200 yuan per month, while those aged 16-18 can spend up to 400 yuan a month. This will be applicable to all games that are available in China, regardless of their platform. This is versus before where the ban was limited to arcades and consoles, resulting in players still being able to game as much as they want on their PCs.
That being said, it is unclear how these curfews will be implemented. However, the Chinese government is said to be working with law enforcement to try and create some kind of unified identification system that can be used with all gaming platforms to verify the user’s identity and age.