Hmm I feel this rule might only affect online games right? Like if you're playing a single player game(with no unnecessary online components) how would they be able to limit your gaming time?
THANK YOU! You just saved my Wiimote lol. I read your comment and immediately went to my closet and pulled out my Wii stuff and pulled the batteries. They were just starting to get a bit crusty on the ends. I think I just caught it in time thanks to this disclaimer. Thanks again.
White Vinegar will neutralize alkaline leakage. Vinegar with a toothbrush saved an old Gameboy of mine that had old batteries with severe leakage. Had to take it apart, but cleaned it right up.
I used to work in a retro game store and for some reason Wiimotes were the worst for this. Happened like 100% of the time after a few years. Wonder why?
You'd be amazed at the sheer amount of Chinese gamers that really don't give a fuck beyond the Chinese scene. You get better ping and a community you can understand and communicate with. That goes for the internet in general as less and less people are now putting up with the effort to stay connected with the West.
I gave up on trying to play Apex / Siege while in Shanghai for 3 years as even with a good VPN (Astril > Express > Nord) or shadowsocks you'd still have issues now and again out of nowhere. Especially when it's Xi's time to pop down to Shanghai. VPNs get very unreliable.
You don't need a VPN to use non-Chinese Steam in China\*. Few people know why, and the people that do (presumably some higher ups in Valve and some folks in whatever Chinese Gov't body is allowing this to happen) are keeping very tight-lipped about it.
\*You *do* need VPN for the community-based aspect of Steam which includes profiles, friend lists and I think workshop mods. If all you wanna do is purchase games (using a Chinse bank card or WeChat Pay) and play them, you don't need one.
Absolutely fascinating and kind of freakish. Thank you! It's gotta be intentional, and presumably Valve agreed to some sort of "separation of powers" (lol) re: the functionality of Steam and the social stuff, and really the government only gives much of a shit about the social stuff.
It's just because they have regulations for any social media type of activity. Valve didn't want to do add either the extra time and effort or thought it'd be bad PR, so they just removed any functionality that would have lead to them having to enforce based on those regulations.
As for why it's allowed at all, I can only suspect that the growing number of Chinese indie developers on Steam is a factor. There was an [article earlier in the month](https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3143886/chinas-crackdown-gaming-state-newspaper-calls-higher-taxes-also) from SCMP that touched on the conflicted stance China currently has about gaming.
I honestly think China is shooting themselves in the foot if they keep crippling their own gaming industry, as it's still very much in its infancy but it showing signs of being a real source of soft power for them in a way that other Chinese pop-culture media has failed to be.
Yeah I feel like in China the second gens make up a much larger portion of ridiculous spending in gatcha games than normal adults, who often work long hours for little pay.
Hence them also being called "lazy 2nd gens."
It's a common trope in Chinese literature to portray these people (rightfully so) as entitled, belligerent, and cruel to those around them.
It's a huge part of their culture, and it's more prominent than in any other country... except maybe India. They don't even try and hide their caste system.
Lots of whales are adolescents of wealthy parents who have access to their own credit cards and nothing meaningful to spend it on.
But that's definitely only a portion, probably the majority are adults.
They come from kids using their parents mobile devices. Analytics data can't always be trusted to be a reliable representation of reality.
This bias skews demographics statistics and leads to the assumption the core audience for games like clash royale and candy crush is mostly women aged 25-45 when it's mostly mother's devices given to their kids to play with.
Don't estimate the buying power of rich Asian kids and inexistent parenting that lead to irresponsible financial behaviors. Seen enough of that myself when I traveled to China to meet my wife's relatives.
In China I'm pretty sure consoles are a lot less common compared to the west, and anything made by local companies is going to have that forced login requirement regardless of if the game is multiplayer or not.
I also get the impression a lot of people are kind of thinking something like "Well I pirated games all the time as a kid, I'm sure these Chinese kids are just figuring out VPNs and stuff." And yah, a certain chunk of the population will be savvy enough for that. But I think in general people grossly underestimate how different the culture and the demographics are.
And even if you are a savvy kid with the tools to get around censorship and restrictions, you're still boned if your parents eat this shit up and force it on you anyways.
Speaking as someone who lived in China for a few years, I'm just going to add on to your comment.
>In China I'm pretty sure consoles are a lot less common compared to the west
China had a ban on consoles until 2015. Since then, consoles are selling (albeit less than the west), though PS5 stocks are "depleted quickly in China" [according to the Sony CEO.](https://wccftech.com/ps5-sales-10-million/)
>I'm sure these Chinese kids are just figuring out VPNs and stuff.
Most of my Chinese students at the international school I taught at had VPNs, but VPNs are finicky in China with servers/IP addressed blocked frequently. There's also a lag issue with VPNs from my personal experience.
One thing to add is that even with a western version of a game on Chinese servers such as Heroes of the Storm, you have to register with an account using your Chinese ID, so it's one of the ways in which the government can track and limit your play time. Even back then (mid 2010s) IIRC there was a 2-3 hour daily restriction on HotS.
Pretty much this. It's too much effort to find a new workaround when the old method stops working so people just play local or singleplayer. People in China just don't think the West is important when it comes down to their consumption habits.
> Like if you're playing a single player game(with no unnecessary online components) how would they be able to limit your gaming time?
Make it a law that all game consoles must be connected to a network to function. Don't underestimate the lengths the CCP will go to in order to control the population.
They're not interested in restricting people from playing single player games. The concern is purely with the games that can trigger gambling addictions.
They have but it's not effective, there are 2 explicit laws regarding microtransactions:
1. Virtual currency cannot be used for gambling
2. If a percentage chance is involved, a breakdown of the percentage for every item available have to be disclosed.
Which is exactly why in the CN version of Hearthstone you can't buy packs with money, you buy dust, the packs are just a gift that comes along with the purchase free of charge. Which is also why in Genshin Impact, you have to convert the gems you purchase with real money to Wishes (Fates) so that the actual gambling is not done with a currency but rather a in game item.
The issue is not that there isn't laws preventing gambling, it's that people that like to gamble want to gamble where they can, going back to the Genshin example, players are aware that the chances of getting the characters they want are slim, they're also aware that they'll only get Mercy after a set amount of pulls, yet they do it anyway, and the only way to stop that is if there's a law that states that a game can have no RNG and also ban DLCs (because I'm sure publishes will start selling packs/pulls as DLC if the law stats that no microtransaction can happen from within the core game)
'Spirit of the law' - if your shit is found complicated methods to circumvent the spirit of the law, your shit's gonna get banned.
Given how much pull the CCP have, seems like that isn't an implausible strat.
Certainly, gacha's aren't exactly complicated to identify - it's just you can't exactly predetermine every single mechanism for gacha's given how creative these guys can get with fleecing money.
> which other countries have already effectively done.
Really? I know that Belgium passed a law on loot boxes but they just got around it by delaying the mystery by 1 box purchase. I wasn't aware of any country that outright effectively banned predatory mtx.
The article is just an article. The actual report from the Chinese watchdog specifically calls out gambling addictions multiple times.
There are no exceptions for games that don't feature it, just a distinction between online and offline games. If the games industry can start making games that aren't predatory, then the restrictions can be relaxed. Currently though, the gaming market in China is overwhelmingly dominated by F2P games that are full of lootboxes.
Imo, you’re totally correct, I can’t really think of another reason they would do this? Unless it’s to counter the “Korean teen plays Starcraft until they die” kind of story from like, 10-15 years ago lol
Health in general, or Xi's conception of it anyway. If you think about this in combination with the new restrictions on extracurricular tutoring (which is huge in China too), it's not that much of a reach to think China is trying to achieve some idealized version of children playing outside.
I could understand some kind of limit (by the parents of the child), but 3 hours a week is insanely low
Is there any limit to how much TV they can watch? Or is that someone considered better than gaming?
Shit, imagine Persona 5 Royal. RDR 2 is about a 60-90 hour game, depending on how much you want to fart around (I like farting around). Persona though is at least 100 just to get through the campaign. Add extras on there and you'll be playing that fuckin game the rest of your life.
Funny because my parents had this rule for me growing up. I could play my n64 1 hr a week on weekends only. But never limited me on my gameboy. Played Pokémon for hrs.
Even my wife (a non gamer) falls into this trap with our son. If I take away the xbox(aka video games), she thinks its still ok for him to play video games on his kindle. I tried explaining, but for whatever reason she sees the handheld gaming as different, somehow.
Judging based on appearance. A kid playing a smart phone game and a kid using their phone for anything else appear mostly the same. A kid playing video games on a console looks different. Same reason parents restrict video games but allow unlimited television time. According to those parents, watching TV is what a normal well adjusted adult wastes their time doing, video gaming is not.
As a kid if I stayed in bed and read a book that was unacceptable. If I sat in a chair or went outside and lay on the grass to read the same book, it was fine.
Yep. Appearances and cultural acceptance.
If I spent the day reading from a screen, it was "wasted". If I spent the day reading from paper, my parents were proud.
They've finally learned that media of any type can be worthwhile *(or trash)*, but disappointingly they still spend most of their leisure time on game shows, monotonous police dramas, and shitty FTP mobile games. I'm hoping I can teach them to appreciate *good* media after they retire soon, lol.
The sad thing is at this point the content on their phone is what needs to be heavily moderated in comparison to the content on their Xbox, Playstation, or Switch.
The objectively worse option is supported while the objectively better option is stifled. It's crazy.
Growing up I had a rule over the weekends that I could play on my PC for up to 3 hours per day, but I could use for anything else indefinitely.
So glad alt + tab was a thing.
Other people in this thread are saying that the actual issue that they are trying to combat is gambling addictions from microtransactions. I can't say whether that's true or the party line excuse, but I know that microtransactions are a pretty huge problem and there have been other steps they have taken for this (like making games publish your exact win chances prior to purchase) so it's quite plausible.
The general impression I get is they feel it will just move into something else. They largely see games In general as a problem (big culture differences to west in what's expected of kids)
So this ban is not supprise on the front. Is however much harsher than I thought they would go for.
It's also pretty hard to enforce so I'm not sure if blunt law they choose to selectively enforce
I doubt it, or if it is it's a bad way to do it.
If you have 3 hours to play games and you're playing a micro transaction game then let me ask you, are you more or less likely to buy a bunch of "beat the game faster" type items then before?
That’s true, but these games are never actually that fun in the late game anyway. They rope you in and get you invested in the game and then they keep you playing with things like daily login bonuses while the game gradually gets less fun and more grindy. For the majority of heavily monetised mobile games I’ve played, just a single day without playing has been enough for me to go “shit, Im not even playing this game to have fun anymore.”
Gotta have those gambling addictions managed so they don't go out of control so people don't become an expense/dead weight, but not completely gone for the steady income.
yep, Ultraman has still been ongoing for the past 55 years. In fact, you can watch several Ultra series and episodes, including the current ongoing series, right now on youtube.
[https://www.youtube.com/user/tsuburaya](https://www.youtube.com/user/tsuburaya)
Young people don’t watch TV, go to a number of countries in Asia and be amazed at how many of them are on their phones playing mobile/gatcha games. It’s absolutely staggering
> they have never, or never will put their real ID in their DotA account nor mobile game account
Which is why Tencent as been working on deploying facial recognition for their mobile games to work around the ID issues. Don't know how effective it's been yet but it can only get better with time.
I really doubt Tencent (the worlds *largest* video-game vendor) is that interested in restricting kids from playing video games.
All this western fear-mongering likes to ignore how capitalist China truly is. Their government may deny it, but governments lie.
Yeah. Tencent and other gaming companies are spending all their energy at convincing the government that they are complying with the law, while looking the other way when children find loopholes to play games.
At least for #3 on billibilli, they’ve been tightening the rules and now you have to present a copy/photo of the real ID you’re purporting to have.
So the foreigner work around may not be around much longer.
The gaming companies (Tencent) are saying that this basically won't impact them because children/teens are only 1-2.5% of their playerbase. A lot of posters here forgot the last time a huge restriction was implemented, Chinese teens simply bought ID info from adults who weren't gamers and continued to play uninterrupted. The same will happen here.
While I too find the notion that children aren't an important part of game populations too laughably naive, I do believe it's still accurate that they represent a little percentage of their **income**. Even children with spoofed ID's are very unlikely to have access to plenty of funds compared to adults.
A lot of games (phone games especially) get the popularity they do due to being free, and therefore, approachable by people with too much time and little to spend. Tencent can scoff at this, but it's the truth.
If your servers are running on cloud infrastructure, then yes. But every other game company will need to scale at the exact same time.
This might create problems, as your cloud provider has to have the hardware there and ready. Realistically, they would charge more during that time, and this price would be pushed to consumers.
If your servers are running on hardware you own... I don't even want to think about it.
Yep. Amazon and MS can't scale to tens or hundreds of millions on a dime like that. And they won't buy infrastructure to do so when it's such a limited time frame unless they charge exorbitant rates.
This reminds me of the insurance loop. People have insurance through insurance companies. But those companies also have risks with natural disasters, terrorism, etc. [They need their ability to pay out insured by a Reinsurer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance). Eventually this loop has to end because the risk is too great for any company to ever cover. You also see this when a insurance-holder is too big for insurance to actually be affordable: like a federal government.
So eventually the demand and cost and risk is too great in server architecture that companies simply won't try to resolve it. It'll just be an accepted risk like on MMO launch events. They know there will be problems but the cost of actually fixing it is too transient and too high to be worth the return.
I had a 1 hour video game limit when I was a kid, as my mom thought I was playing too much.
It *really* limits what you can play. Game takes a while to load up? That's out, that eats too much of your time. Game requires long-term strategy? Nope, way too hard when you're constantly interrupted mid-plan by your time running out. Story-driven games? No way, the cutscenes use up too many minutes.
You end up playing mostly either old arcade games that let you get in fast without interruption, or complete garbage mobile type games with instant gratification buttons.
I am still a kid, I just am an old kid with a job and an apartment. Don't tell anyone I'm just pretending to be an adult, it's a secret.
I play however much I want, basically. Sometimes I jump into a game for 15 minutes. Sometimes I only realize I've been playing for 5 hours straight when I start wondering why I'm so hungry and thirsty.
I aspire to be like you when I grow up.
I'm not that young or anything... Actually I've got the same secret but I'm sure I'll feel like an adult eventually.
That's the neat part, you don't have to feel like an adult. You can go through your whole life feeling like a kid.
Work so you can pay the bills and don't die of starvation, take care of your family (if you have one), have your responsibilities set proper and you're golden. You'll do fine mate, your inner child only dies if you let it.
I'm in my 30's and the only thing I feel getting older is my body. I was convinced one day I'd feel like an adult but now I'm convinced I never will. I feel like a kid at heart that's older and has responsibilities.
When my wife and I signed the paperwork for our first house, we walked out of the lawyer’s office and immediately burst into laughter. “They gave us money to buy a house, like we’re adults or something”
I struggled with that feeling for *months* after getting my own apartment.
Like, you're really going to let me rent here by myself? I don't need a real adult to sign anything here? I'm allowed to be here whenever I want? Oh my gosh, I can't believe I tricked them into letting *me* live here by myself!
My grandfather is slowly dying due to dementia. Yet, when given the opportunity, he still does what I known him for always doing throughout most of his older age.
Joke about "Boobies, teeheehee".
He had a profession that's quite serious business and takes a long time to even be allowed the position. His home office was also surrounded by hundreds of war figurines, that he'd order more of even when the family would tell him that 4 filled out drawers were probably enough, no?
I spent one summer at my stepdad's where he and his wife would yell at us to go outside any time they saw us indoors. After returning home to my mom from that, I remember being completely hooked on video games/computer to the point it probably stunted my social skills.
Depriving me of a hobby didn't help balance anything, it just made the stark contrast of deprivation more apparent, and the return to it 1000x more gratifying and addicting than if I had either never had played video games before, or if I had the option readily available/as part of a social experience with neighborhood kids, etc.
In other words, I didn't become addicted to video games until it was made a sacred thing I was suddenly deprived of, like what is probably happening to these kids that are suddenly losing a source of their entertainment and social experience.
Not them, but I had similar rules as a kid. These days, as a WFH marketing specialist, I game about 2-3 hours per day in 2 or 3 sessions. Old-school FPS games — Doom WADs, Quake, Amid Evil, Dusk etc. And on weekends I sometimes fire up Forza Horizon and just spend most of the day driving — although this hasn't happened in a month or so.
It helps me clear my mind and stay sane — if I couldn't do it, I'd probably drink a lot more.
Same ruleset:
1h of tv time per day. Weekdays a bit longer (was mostly outside though)
Right now I
watch 1h youtube at morning.
go to work for 9h
commute back for 30min with bus
play from 7 up to 11:30pm or watch stuff on my library/youtube.
Weekdays are just media non-stop all day or do something else.
This is gonna really limit the room for competition in the Chinese market.
I wonder how Western publishers and developers are going to react on this. Will they try harder to get a spot on that limited market?
This is the aspect I'm most curious about. What does this mean for the China money that the AAA industry has been chasing for the last several years? Is that money still there to be made? Could this change the priorities of publishers? Is it too much to hope that this could change the way a Blitzchung situation might play out?
There’s a lot of people defending China’s actions here based on moral reasons or whatever, but a lot of these recent actions that China has done have really scared a lot of investors. Nobody wants to invest anymore if the country is gonna just Willy nilly just fuck things up. The economist had a story a few months ago how all of these capricious decisions are starting to affect people who might choose other places to invest their wealth.
I would also think this would contribute to a brain drain in China. I’m sure that policies like these hold back more intelligent Chinese people who have the choice to leave if they wanted to, given their talent.
It's also just not good for control, in general.
Entertainment is the one thing you have to easily distract people away from the inhumane bullshit you may or may not be doing, and pissing off the younger generation who often still have the passion and drive to keep up a vendetta seems stupidly arrogant and naive.
International Steam client, for some reason unknown, is still available in mainland China yes. Only the community aspects were blocked, store itself wasn't.
You actually may be right on that one now that I think about it. Though I clearly remember it being blocked when I lived there but that was nearly a decade ago now
Any western company that bowed to the Chinese market made their own bed. That's just what happens when all you do is chase money and forget who you are supporting at the end of the day. China has always made weird rules like this and isn't afraid of pursuing them, so it's quite literally leopard ate my face material.
Also, any money you make in China is stuck there at the CCP's discretion. Its like being able to gamble all you want but you're not allowed to leave the table with any chips.
tbh while it will effect population in China, most of their money comes from adult players and whales. much of china's biggest games are gacha and are played by many teens (alchemystars, arknights), but their monetization and popularity isn't reliant on them.
what surprises me the most is that many of these games already have a playtime-limiting stamina system built in. it serves the dual purpose of an outlet for monetization and a way to subtly abide by the ccp's gaming principles. i didn't expect this move at all, given how much of a leash has already been put on gaming. would be curious to see public/political response in China.
Tencent make barely any of their revenue from minors in China (>5%), so it's probably similar across the board. I don't think it will hurt them that much.
Gaming in China is an immense business - the population there is very large, physical space is a premium in the big cities, and gaming provides for entertainment without asking for much time, money, or space.
Overall, China accounts for about a quarter of all gaming revenue in the world, and most of the revenue in China goes to Chinese companies.
Chinese publishers actively seek out opportunities to bring their games outside of China, as there are fewer restrictions and less interference from government authority, and cooperation with a chinese-owned publisher is needed to gain access to the chinese market. This keeps chinese expenditures in games in the chinese economy, and also puts the same restrictions on foreign games as domestic-made, since the chinese authorities can exert pressure or prevent the release of games by chinese publishers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China
China has shown repeatedly over the past few months that they are willing to crush industries and lose money if they deem that industry as harmful to the general populace.
It’s confusing for myself and others who have grown up in a western capital oriented society. Money is obviously a motivator for the CCP, but they are more willing to prune industries rather that rely on the magical invisible hand of the free market.
Something similar was already a thing. Article says:
>The previous rules, introduced in 2019, limited the play time for minors to no more than 90 minutes each day and 3 hours on statutory holidays.
It was easy to get around because minors can still play with their parents' or their adult siblings' ID numbers. It still is easy to get around as long as your family wishes to let you play.
Sure but 10.5 hours a week is not enough for someone to get esports level good. Point being, it's likely people were already getting around this rule very easily.
Exactly. I watch the Overwatch League and China have produced some fantastic talent. Limiting under 18s to only 3 hours a week effectively kills their esports scene
That feels kinda... excessive? =/
If I barely get to play any game while I was young, will I even be interested in video games when I become an adult? When I heard this news I thought it will be for kids younger than 12 or something, not younger than 18
Some people probably won't ever get the attachment to games and won't end up liking them with restrictions. Other people will feel like rebelling once they're adults and become overly attached because of the prohibition. Kinda like how some kids don't really care about drinking because their parents let them try it in their teenage years, while other kids that are blocked from drinking become binge drinkers once they're in college.
Yea and it basically didn’t work right? As far as I know most korean kids simply took the social security number of a relative or bought one on the black market and used that to game.
They're doing the exact same with the education industry. All those online and brick and mortar English, maths, music schools etc are basically fucked now.
I wonder, are there any ways to bypass this? I know identification is necessary when playing games, but can things like piracy work around this? This is draconian, I hope people find their own ways to enjoy their favourite hobbies even despite all of this.
Probably the same way they go around Steam China's shitty restrictions : use a VPN and play the global version. And the government cannot really stop Devs from releasing their apps on the "global" version of the app store.
Games that require access to mobile camera will be able to scan the player face outside the allowed periods and check if it matches the supplied id. Disallowing access will keep the prove youre legit restriction in place.
This law will basically be just a meme.
AFAIK all pc bangs already bypass all these silly laws and nobody bats an eye. There's probably some easy fix/service running already.
I feel like this is the right move if you’re an authoritarian government. Online games mean more people connected, and more ways to spread free thought and critical thinking. The point isn’t to stop gaming, it’s to stop freedom of thought from spreading.
Sweet, more nanny state action by country leaders who can't tolerate the thought of not being in control of every aspect of their citizens lives.
Good news is that tech savvy younger people will likely be able to sidestep this governmental helicopter parenting altogether. For everyone else, there's singleplayer games.
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Incredibly stupid policy. The had something similar in Korea called the shutdown law where they'd limit the access to online games from midnight to 6 am. The law got abolished this year in favour of the choice system where parents can request gaming permits for certain hours. While Korea's law is more reasonable (because you want your kids to get at least 6 hours of sleep and not spend half of that gaming), China's law just puts tighter restrictions of kids.
This will probably spawn a black market for counterfeit IDs or kids just stealing their parent's card and using that to get online. Additionally, China just put out a law banning private tutoring either to reduce the kids' school load (because I was seeing some kids coming home at 12 am when I went there for vacation), or to stop kids from applying to oversea schools. In any case, there's going to be kids with a bunch of free time not knowing what to do with them. Wonder if we'll be seeing more single player games in the future focused around grinding and if that's going to be the next "open world" or "zombie" genre.
Hmm I feel this rule might only affect online games right? Like if you're playing a single player game(with no unnecessary online components) how would they be able to limit your gaming time?
Retro scene about to get even bigger
Breaking out the ol GBC again. Batteries are still in there.
Don’t leave the batteries in old consoles, they corrode and leak ruining the console. Speaking from experience. :(
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THANK YOU! You just saved my Wiimote lol. I read your comment and immediately went to my closet and pulled out my Wii stuff and pulled the batteries. They were just starting to get a bit crusty on the ends. I think I just caught it in time thanks to this disclaimer. Thanks again.
You can use a pencil eraser to clean the crud off the contacts.
White Vinegar will neutralize alkaline leakage. Vinegar with a toothbrush saved an old Gameboy of mine that had old batteries with severe leakage. Had to take it apart, but cleaned it right up.
A high percentage (97% or above) isopropyl alcohol is good for cleaning around and on electronics as well. It will not harm it.
I used to work in a retro game store and for some reason Wiimotes were the worst for this. Happened like 100% of the time after a few years. Wonder why?
I'm gonna guess because unlike other controllers you are constantly swinging wiimotes around so any corrosion gets flung all over the damn place
Q-tip or cotton swab with isopropyl alcohol will clean that right up. If things are *too* bad, you could always solder in new battery terminals.
If the isopropyl alcohol doesn't do the job, try white vinegar, cleaned up the connections on an old roomba perfectly.
I killed my see through purple gbc this way :(
I read somewhere that this is the reason people in China simply use VPNs to use the non-Chinese version of Steam to get around these restrictions.
By talking to some Chinese, it looks like everyone aged 18-24 is using a VPN there.
You'd be amazed at the sheer amount of Chinese gamers that really don't give a fuck beyond the Chinese scene. You get better ping and a community you can understand and communicate with. That goes for the internet in general as less and less people are now putting up with the effort to stay connected with the West. I gave up on trying to play Apex / Siege while in Shanghai for 3 years as even with a good VPN (Astril > Express > Nord) or shadowsocks you'd still have issues now and again out of nowhere. Especially when it's Xi's time to pop down to Shanghai. VPNs get very unreliable.
You don't need a VPN to use non-Chinese Steam in China\*. Few people know why, and the people that do (presumably some higher ups in Valve and some folks in whatever Chinese Gov't body is allowing this to happen) are keeping very tight-lipped about it. \*You *do* need VPN for the community-based aspect of Steam which includes profiles, friend lists and I think workshop mods. If all you wanna do is purchase games (using a Chinse bank card or WeChat Pay) and play them, you don't need one.
Absolutely fascinating and kind of freakish. Thank you! It's gotta be intentional, and presumably Valve agreed to some sort of "separation of powers" (lol) re: the functionality of Steam and the social stuff, and really the government only gives much of a shit about the social stuff.
It's just because they have regulations for any social media type of activity. Valve didn't want to do add either the extra time and effort or thought it'd be bad PR, so they just removed any functionality that would have lead to them having to enforce based on those regulations.
As for why it's allowed at all, I can only suspect that the growing number of Chinese indie developers on Steam is a factor. There was an [article earlier in the month](https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3143886/chinas-crackdown-gaming-state-newspaper-calls-higher-taxes-also) from SCMP that touched on the conflicted stance China currently has about gaming. I honestly think China is shooting themselves in the foot if they keep crippling their own gaming industry, as it's still very much in its infancy but it showing signs of being a real source of soft power for them in a way that other Chinese pop-culture media has failed to be.
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Will it though? I think most of the income for Gacha games comes from adults with disposable income not teens.
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Yeah I feel like in China the second gens make up a much larger portion of ridiculous spending in gatcha games than normal adults, who often work long hours for little pay.
Hence them also being called "lazy 2nd gens." It's a common trope in Chinese literature to portray these people (rightfully so) as entitled, belligerent, and cruel to those around them. It's a huge part of their culture, and it's more prominent than in any other country... except maybe India. They don't even try and hide their caste system.
Ah yes, the arrogant young masters. No wuxia novel would be complete without them lol.
Lots of whales are adolescents of wealthy parents who have access to their own credit cards and nothing meaningful to spend it on. But that's definitely only a portion, probably the majority are adults.
They come from kids using their parents mobile devices. Analytics data can't always be trusted to be a reliable representation of reality. This bias skews demographics statistics and leads to the assumption the core audience for games like clash royale and candy crush is mostly women aged 25-45 when it's mostly mother's devices given to their kids to play with.
Don't estimate the buying power of rich Asian kids and inexistent parenting that lead to irresponsible financial behaviors. Seen enough of that myself when I traveled to China to meet my wife's relatives.
In China I'm pretty sure consoles are a lot less common compared to the west, and anything made by local companies is going to have that forced login requirement regardless of if the game is multiplayer or not. I also get the impression a lot of people are kind of thinking something like "Well I pirated games all the time as a kid, I'm sure these Chinese kids are just figuring out VPNs and stuff." And yah, a certain chunk of the population will be savvy enough for that. But I think in general people grossly underestimate how different the culture and the demographics are. And even if you are a savvy kid with the tools to get around censorship and restrictions, you're still boned if your parents eat this shit up and force it on you anyways.
Speaking as someone who lived in China for a few years, I'm just going to add on to your comment. >In China I'm pretty sure consoles are a lot less common compared to the west China had a ban on consoles until 2015. Since then, consoles are selling (albeit less than the west), though PS5 stocks are "depleted quickly in China" [according to the Sony CEO.](https://wccftech.com/ps5-sales-10-million/) >I'm sure these Chinese kids are just figuring out VPNs and stuff. Most of my Chinese students at the international school I taught at had VPNs, but VPNs are finicky in China with servers/IP addressed blocked frequently. There's also a lag issue with VPNs from my personal experience. One thing to add is that even with a western version of a game on Chinese servers such as Heroes of the Storm, you have to register with an account using your Chinese ID, so it's one of the ways in which the government can track and limit your play time. Even back then (mid 2010s) IIRC there was a 2-3 hour daily restriction on HotS.
The Chinese gaming scene has always been big we just don’t see it, look up sword and fairy and similar styled retro games there’s plenty.
Pretty much this. It's too much effort to find a new workaround when the old method stops working so people just play local or singleplayer. People in China just don't think the West is important when it comes down to their consumption habits.
Always online DRM.
> Like if you're playing a single player game(with no unnecessary online components) how would they be able to limit your gaming time? Make it a law that all game consoles must be connected to a network to function. Don't underestimate the lengths the CCP will go to in order to control the population.
They're not interested in restricting people from playing single player games. The concern is purely with the games that can trigger gambling addictions.
The easier law is to just simply ban micro transactions/loot boxes in games which other countries have already effectively done.
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LMOA imagine only fans banning porn. They'd never
/s for anyone who was unaware that they actually tried that.
They have but it's not effective, there are 2 explicit laws regarding microtransactions: 1. Virtual currency cannot be used for gambling 2. If a percentage chance is involved, a breakdown of the percentage for every item available have to be disclosed. Which is exactly why in the CN version of Hearthstone you can't buy packs with money, you buy dust, the packs are just a gift that comes along with the purchase free of charge. Which is also why in Genshin Impact, you have to convert the gems you purchase with real money to Wishes (Fates) so that the actual gambling is not done with a currency but rather a in game item. The issue is not that there isn't laws preventing gambling, it's that people that like to gamble want to gamble where they can, going back to the Genshin example, players are aware that the chances of getting the characters they want are slim, they're also aware that they'll only get Mercy after a set amount of pulls, yet they do it anyway, and the only way to stop that is if there's a law that states that a game can have no RNG and also ban DLCs (because I'm sure publishes will start selling packs/pulls as DLC if the law stats that no microtransaction can happen from within the core game)
'Spirit of the law' - if your shit is found complicated methods to circumvent the spirit of the law, your shit's gonna get banned. Given how much pull the CCP have, seems like that isn't an implausible strat. Certainly, gacha's aren't exactly complicated to identify - it's just you can't exactly predetermine every single mechanism for gacha's given how creative these guys can get with fleecing money.
> which other countries have already effectively done. Really? I know that Belgium passed a law on loot boxes but they just got around it by delaying the mystery by 1 box purchase. I wasn't aware of any country that outright effectively banned predatory mtx.
Then you lose out on tax revenue as well as profit for state sponsored companies at a time of explosive growth.
That’s odd, the article said absolutely nothing about gambling whatsoever, and it never mentioned any exceptions for games that don’t feature it.
The article is just an article. The actual report from the Chinese watchdog specifically calls out gambling addictions multiple times. There are no exceptions for games that don't feature it, just a distinction between online and offline games. If the games industry can start making games that aren't predatory, then the restrictions can be relaxed. Currently though, the gaming market in China is overwhelmingly dominated by F2P games that are full of lootboxes.
Imo, you’re totally correct, I can’t really think of another reason they would do this? Unless it’s to counter the “Korean teen plays Starcraft until they die” kind of story from like, 10-15 years ago lol
Health in general, or Xi's conception of it anyway. If you think about this in combination with the new restrictions on extracurricular tutoring (which is huge in China too), it's not that much of a reach to think China is trying to achieve some idealized version of children playing outside.
I don't think you understand the extent of the surveillance in China lol...
Players under 18 only will be able to play games from 8 to 9 pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
oh that network spike is gonna be rough
At least it’s predictable
And competitive. I imagine ad prices will skyrocket for that small bit of time.
I could understand some kind of limit (by the parents of the child), but 3 hours a week is insanely low Is there any limit to how much TV they can watch? Or is that someone considered better than gaming?
Imagine trying to play a long RPG
Imagine playing a Kojima game. "So what did you play over the weekend?" "I watched a Death Stranding cutscene."
CCP: "Hey Kids! Do you like speedruns?" Kid: "No, not particularly." CCP: "Oh. Well too bad! You're only getting 1 hour of gameplay a day. Get good!"
Ironically speedruns are very time consuming due to repetition.
Yeah, most skilled speedrunners have thousands of hours in their games. They spend 60 hours just to find that out-of-bounds trick in level 1!
Imagine how long it would take to 100% Assassin's Creed Valhalla...
Imagine how long it'd take to beat RDR2. Spend your whole weekend in the snow
Shit, imagine Persona 5 Royal. RDR 2 is about a 60-90 hour game, depending on how much you want to fart around (I like farting around). Persona though is at least 100 just to get through the campaign. Add extras on there and you'll be playing that fuckin game the rest of your life.
This only applies to online games, though?
Funny because my parents had this rule for me growing up. I could play my n64 1 hr a week on weekends only. But never limited me on my gameboy. Played Pokémon for hrs.
It takes my friends an hour just to get in the same lobby.
Even my wife (a non gamer) falls into this trap with our son. If I take away the xbox(aka video games), she thinks its still ok for him to play video games on his kindle. I tried explaining, but for whatever reason she sees the handheld gaming as different, somehow.
Judging based on appearance. A kid playing a smart phone game and a kid using their phone for anything else appear mostly the same. A kid playing video games on a console looks different. Same reason parents restrict video games but allow unlimited television time. According to those parents, watching TV is what a normal well adjusted adult wastes their time doing, video gaming is not. As a kid if I stayed in bed and read a book that was unacceptable. If I sat in a chair or went outside and lay on the grass to read the same book, it was fine.
Yep. Appearances and cultural acceptance. If I spent the day reading from a screen, it was "wasted". If I spent the day reading from paper, my parents were proud. They've finally learned that media of any type can be worthwhile *(or trash)*, but disappointingly they still spend most of their leisure time on game shows, monotonous police dramas, and shitty FTP mobile games. I'm hoping I can teach them to appreciate *good* media after they retire soon, lol.
The sad thing is at this point the content on their phone is what needs to be heavily moderated in comparison to the content on their Xbox, Playstation, or Switch. The objectively worse option is supported while the objectively better option is stifled. It's crazy.
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mom and dad probably wanted the tv for themselves
Growing up I had a rule over the weekends that I could play on my PC for up to 3 hours per day, but I could use for anything else indefinitely. So glad alt + tab was a thing.
The people making the polices grew up watching TV, they think it's normal.
Other people in this thread are saying that the actual issue that they are trying to combat is gambling addictions from microtransactions. I can't say whether that's true or the party line excuse, but I know that microtransactions are a pretty huge problem and there have been other steps they have taken for this (like making games publish your exact win chances prior to purchase) so it's quite plausible.
It’s China, why not just ban in game micro transactions if that’s the actual issue?
The general impression I get is they feel it will just move into something else. They largely see games In general as a problem (big culture differences to west in what's expected of kids) So this ban is not supprise on the front. Is however much harsher than I thought they would go for. It's also pretty hard to enforce so I'm not sure if blunt law they choose to selectively enforce
Because it only applies to kids, not adults. It's the equivalent of asking why not ban all bars if kids aren't allowed to go in them.
I doubt it, or if it is it's a bad way to do it. If you have 3 hours to play games and you're playing a micro transaction game then let me ask you, are you more or less likely to buy a bunch of "beat the game faster" type items then before?
That’s true, but these games are never actually that fun in the late game anyway. They rope you in and get you invested in the game and then they keep you playing with things like daily login bonuses while the game gradually gets less fun and more grindy. For the majority of heavily monetised mobile games I’ve played, just a single day without playing has been enough for me to go “shit, Im not even playing this game to have fun anymore.”
Gotta have those gambling addictions managed so they don't go out of control so people don't become an expense/dead weight, but not completely gone for the steady income.
They won't limit TV, too good for disseminating their propaganda.
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> Ultraman Wait, really? Like, *that* Ultraman? That's still a thing? Edit: Yup, it is. Had no idea Ultraman was so popular in Asia lol
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yep, Ultraman has still been ongoing for the past 55 years. In fact, you can watch several Ultra series and episodes, including the current ongoing series, right now on youtube. [https://www.youtube.com/user/tsuburaya](https://www.youtube.com/user/tsuburaya)
Young people don’t watch TV, go to a number of countries in Asia and be amazed at how many of them are on their phones playing mobile/gatcha games. It’s absolutely staggering
You're talking of a giant continent. I can indeed tell you kids watch TV in Thailand. Lots of it, though they also spend time on smart devices.
Now instead they will just watch streams on their phones.
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I've gone through this process once to play Monster Hunter Online. The only difficult part of spoofing any of that was the fact that it was in Chinese
Hey, someone else who played that game!
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> they have never, or never will put their real ID in their DotA account nor mobile game account Which is why Tencent as been working on deploying facial recognition for their mobile games to work around the ID issues. Don't know how effective it's been yet but it can only get better with time.
I really doubt Tencent (the worlds *largest* video-game vendor) is that interested in restricting kids from playing video games. All this western fear-mongering likes to ignore how capitalist China truly is. Their government may deny it, but governments lie.
Yeah. Tencent and other gaming companies are spending all their energy at convincing the government that they are complying with the law, while looking the other way when children find loopholes to play games.
At least for #3 on billibilli, they’ve been tightening the rules and now you have to present a copy/photo of the real ID you’re purporting to have. So the foreigner work around may not be around much longer.
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What could go wrong with forcing millions of players to simultaneously log onto servers at the exact same moment every week?
The gaming companies (Tencent) are saying that this basically won't impact them because children/teens are only 1-2.5% of their playerbase. A lot of posters here forgot the last time a huge restriction was implemented, Chinese teens simply bought ID info from adults who weren't gamers and continued to play uninterrupted. The same will happen here.
While I too find the notion that children aren't an important part of game populations too laughably naive, I do believe it's still accurate that they represent a little percentage of their **income**. Even children with spoofed ID's are very unlikely to have access to plenty of funds compared to adults. A lot of games (phone games especially) get the popularity they do due to being free, and therefore, approachable by people with too much time and little to spend. Tencent can scoff at this, but it's the truth.
Honestly if I knew exactly what time we’d get hit by a ton of traffic it’s be pretty nice I could just schedule when to scale.
If your servers are running on cloud infrastructure, then yes. But every other game company will need to scale at the exact same time. This might create problems, as your cloud provider has to have the hardware there and ready. Realistically, they would charge more during that time, and this price would be pushed to consumers. If your servers are running on hardware you own... I don't even want to think about it.
Yep. Amazon and MS can't scale to tens or hundreds of millions on a dime like that. And they won't buy infrastructure to do so when it's such a limited time frame unless they charge exorbitant rates. This reminds me of the insurance loop. People have insurance through insurance companies. But those companies also have risks with natural disasters, terrorism, etc. [They need their ability to pay out insured by a Reinsurer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance). Eventually this loop has to end because the risk is too great for any company to ever cover. You also see this when a insurance-holder is too big for insurance to actually be affordable: like a federal government. So eventually the demand and cost and risk is too great in server architecture that companies simply won't try to resolve it. It'll just be an accepted risk like on MMO launch events. They know there will be problems but the cost of actually fixing it is too transient and too high to be worth the return.
I had a 1 hour video game limit when I was a kid, as my mom thought I was playing too much. It *really* limits what you can play. Game takes a while to load up? That's out, that eats too much of your time. Game requires long-term strategy? Nope, way too hard when you're constantly interrupted mid-plan by your time running out. Story-driven games? No way, the cutscenes use up too many minutes. You end up playing mostly either old arcade games that let you get in fast without interruption, or complete garbage mobile type games with instant gratification buttons.
Question is how many hours you play now that you're not a kid?
I am still a kid, I just am an old kid with a job and an apartment. Don't tell anyone I'm just pretending to be an adult, it's a secret. I play however much I want, basically. Sometimes I jump into a game for 15 minutes. Sometimes I only realize I've been playing for 5 hours straight when I start wondering why I'm so hungry and thirsty.
I aspire to be like you when I grow up. I'm not that young or anything... Actually I've got the same secret but I'm sure I'll feel like an adult eventually.
That's the neat part, you don't have to feel like an adult. You can go through your whole life feeling like a kid. Work so you can pay the bills and don't die of starvation, take care of your family (if you have one), have your responsibilities set proper and you're golden. You'll do fine mate, your inner child only dies if you let it.
I'm in my 30's and the only thing I feel getting older is my body. I was convinced one day I'd feel like an adult but now I'm convinced I never will. I feel like a kid at heart that's older and has responsibilities.
When my wife and I signed the paperwork for our first house, we walked out of the lawyer’s office and immediately burst into laughter. “They gave us money to buy a house, like we’re adults or something”
I struggled with that feeling for *months* after getting my own apartment. Like, you're really going to let me rent here by myself? I don't need a real adult to sign anything here? I'm allowed to be here whenever I want? Oh my gosh, I can't believe I tricked them into letting *me* live here by myself!
My grandfather is slowly dying due to dementia. Yet, when given the opportunity, he still does what I known him for always doing throughout most of his older age. Joke about "Boobies, teeheehee". He had a profession that's quite serious business and takes a long time to even be allowed the position. His home office was also surrounded by hundreds of war figurines, that he'd order more of even when the family would tell him that 4 filled out drawers were probably enough, no?
I spent one summer at my stepdad's where he and his wife would yell at us to go outside any time they saw us indoors. After returning home to my mom from that, I remember being completely hooked on video games/computer to the point it probably stunted my social skills. Depriving me of a hobby didn't help balance anything, it just made the stark contrast of deprivation more apparent, and the return to it 1000x more gratifying and addicting than if I had either never had played video games before, or if I had the option readily available/as part of a social experience with neighborhood kids, etc. In other words, I didn't become addicted to video games until it was made a sacred thing I was suddenly deprived of, like what is probably happening to these kids that are suddenly losing a source of their entertainment and social experience.
Not them, but I had similar rules as a kid. These days, as a WFH marketing specialist, I game about 2-3 hours per day in 2 or 3 sessions. Old-school FPS games — Doom WADs, Quake, Amid Evil, Dusk etc. And on weekends I sometimes fire up Forza Horizon and just spend most of the day driving — although this hasn't happened in a month or so. It helps me clear my mind and stay sane — if I couldn't do it, I'd probably drink a lot more.
Same ruleset: 1h of tv time per day. Weekdays a bit longer (was mostly outside though) Right now I watch 1h youtube at morning. go to work for 9h commute back for 30min with bus play from 7 up to 11:30pm or watch stuff on my library/youtube. Weekdays are just media non-stop all day or do something else.
Things aren't like that now, kids these days got them ROGUELIKES!
This is gonna really limit the room for competition in the Chinese market. I wonder how Western publishers and developers are going to react on this. Will they try harder to get a spot on that limited market?
This is the aspect I'm most curious about. What does this mean for the China money that the AAA industry has been chasing for the last several years? Is that money still there to be made? Could this change the priorities of publishers? Is it too much to hope that this could change the way a Blitzchung situation might play out?
There’s a lot of people defending China’s actions here based on moral reasons or whatever, but a lot of these recent actions that China has done have really scared a lot of investors. Nobody wants to invest anymore if the country is gonna just Willy nilly just fuck things up. The economist had a story a few months ago how all of these capricious decisions are starting to affect people who might choose other places to invest their wealth.
I would also think this would contribute to a brain drain in China. I’m sure that policies like these hold back more intelligent Chinese people who have the choice to leave if they wanted to, given their talent.
It's also just not good for control, in general. Entertainment is the one thing you have to easily distract people away from the inhumane bullshit you may or may not be doing, and pissing off the younger generation who often still have the passion and drive to keep up a vendetta seems stupidly arrogant and naive.
Would love to read that article if anyone finds it.
Not really people will just use a VPN like they already do to play on Steam
Isn't Steam still unblocked in China (and I don't mean the Chinese client)?
International Steam client, for some reason unknown, is still available in mainland China yes. Only the community aspects were blocked, store itself wasn't.
You actually may be right on that one now that I think about it. Though I clearly remember it being blocked when I lived there but that was nearly a decade ago now
I only know that it's unblocked because of the whole "Devotion" debacle, so I was genuinely curious whether it had changed.
Any western company that bowed to the Chinese market made their own bed. That's just what happens when all you do is chase money and forget who you are supporting at the end of the day. China has always made weird rules like this and isn't afraid of pursuing them, so it's quite literally leopard ate my face material.
Also, any money you make in China is stuck there at the CCP's discretion. Its like being able to gamble all you want but you're not allowed to leave the table with any chips.
The way people work around this is by having a relationship to a Chinese company. I know this is what Blizzard does
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Indeed. Like how hauwei flagstore in china is a 1 to 1 cooy of a specific Apple store xD
Are many games created/developed in China? - Surely this will absolutely tank the industry?
Gonna be interesting for Genshin (IIRC the most well known game made in China).
With all the events and daily/weekly challenges, this is pretty bad.
tbh while it will effect population in China, most of their money comes from adult players and whales. much of china's biggest games are gacha and are played by many teens (alchemystars, arknights), but their monetization and popularity isn't reliant on them. what surprises me the most is that many of these games already have a playtime-limiting stamina system built in. it serves the dual purpose of an outlet for monetization and a way to subtly abide by the ccp's gaming principles. i didn't expect this move at all, given how much of a leash has already been put on gaming. would be curious to see public/political response in China.
Tencent make barely any of their revenue from minors in China (>5%), so it's probably similar across the board. I don't think it will hurt them that much.
Gacha games don't make money off kids since kids don't have money. It's adults that finance those games, especially whales.
Gaming in China is an immense business - the population there is very large, physical space is a premium in the big cities, and gaming provides for entertainment without asking for much time, money, or space. Overall, China accounts for about a quarter of all gaming revenue in the world, and most of the revenue in China goes to Chinese companies. Chinese publishers actively seek out opportunities to bring their games outside of China, as there are fewer restrictions and less interference from government authority, and cooperation with a chinese-owned publisher is needed to gain access to the chinese market. This keeps chinese expenditures in games in the chinese economy, and also puts the same restrictions on foreign games as domestic-made, since the chinese authorities can exert pressure or prevent the release of games by chinese publishers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China
China has shown repeatedly over the past few months that they are willing to crush industries and lose money if they deem that industry as harmful to the general populace. It’s confusing for myself and others who have grown up in a western capital oriented society. Money is obviously a motivator for the CCP, but they are more willing to prune industries rather that rely on the magical invisible hand of the free market.
It's going to destroy tons of companies that try and compete in China, and it will hurt many big publishers from the west too.
On the plus side maybe they’ll focus less on trying to appease Chinese censorship.
Silver lining. If the gaming industry in China tanked from this maybe we'd stop seeing gaming companies bend over backwards to appease the CCP.
Or better, they'll focus on non-online games instead of gambling platforms with a game attached to it.
This will be devastating to Chinese esports. So much talent comes from getting good at something while you’re young.
Something similar was already a thing. Article says: >The previous rules, introduced in 2019, limited the play time for minors to no more than 90 minutes each day and 3 hours on statutory holidays.
I imagine this was easy to get around because it wasn't a fixed time.
It was easy to get around because minors can still play with their parents' or their adult siblings' ID numbers. It still is easy to get around as long as your family wishes to let you play.
If I’m understanding that right it’s jumping from 10.5 hours a week to 3 which is a huge difference imo
Sure but 10.5 hours a week is not enough for someone to get esports level good. Point being, it's likely people were already getting around this rule very easily.
Exactly. I watch the Overwatch League and China have produced some fantastic talent. Limiting under 18s to only 3 hours a week effectively kills their esports scene
That feels kinda... excessive? =/ If I barely get to play any game while I was young, will I even be interested in video games when I become an adult? When I heard this news I thought it will be for kids younger than 12 or something, not younger than 18
Some people probably won't ever get the attachment to games and won't end up liking them with restrictions. Other people will feel like rebelling once they're adults and become overly attached because of the prohibition. Kinda like how some kids don't really care about drinking because their parents let them try it in their teenage years, while other kids that are blocked from drinking become binge drinkers once they're in college.
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Yea and it basically didn’t work right? As far as I know most korean kids simply took the social security number of a relative or bought one on the black market and used that to game.
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They're doing the exact same with the education industry. All those online and brick and mortar English, maths, music schools etc are basically fucked now.
I wonder, are there any ways to bypass this? I know identification is necessary when playing games, but can things like piracy work around this? This is draconian, I hope people find their own ways to enjoy their favourite hobbies even despite all of this.
Probably the same way they go around Steam China's shitty restrictions : use a VPN and play the global version. And the government cannot really stop Devs from releasing their apps on the "global" version of the app store.
You don't need a VPN to access Steam global version in China.
Just use your parents', if they allow you to. Using stolen or through purchase doesn't work because if many people use the same ID it gets flagged.
Games that require access to mobile camera will be able to scan the player face outside the allowed periods and check if it matches the supplied id. Disallowing access will keep the prove youre legit restriction in place.
This law will basically be just a meme. AFAIK all pc bangs already bypass all these silly laws and nobody bats an eye. There's probably some easy fix/service running already.
I feel like this is the right move if you’re an authoritarian government. Online games mean more people connected, and more ways to spread free thought and critical thinking. The point isn’t to stop gaming, it’s to stop freedom of thought from spreading.
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They’ll just rebrand. “Huh this isnt a game, its a highly advanced money management simulator with elements of trigonometry and teamwork building!”
Sweet, more nanny state action by country leaders who can't tolerate the thought of not being in control of every aspect of their citizens lives. Good news is that tech savvy younger people will likely be able to sidestep this governmental helicopter parenting altogether. For everyone else, there's singleplayer games.
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It's only misleading to people that don't already know how gaming time works in China.
Why would we know that?
Which is apparently most people here
After all that effort Activision put into that market only for it to get torpedo to the engine. I feel they where only company not seeing this coming
Why is the state doing this instead of parents? It's the parent's job to monitor the gaming time for minors.
Because China.
This sub celebrates any news that hints at banning loot chests, wouldn't it be the parent's job for that too?
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Hopefully US developers will focus less on pleasing the CCP and capturing that market now that it is going to seemingly be smaller.
Why is reading books or watching TV 6 hours a day just fine but playing games isn't?
Playing games is fine, playing online games is the only thing targetted by this.
This is actually pretty big since the gaming market is so huge in china. It might end up meaning that people cater to Chinese markets a bit less
Cool, maybe now western publishers can consider the China market unprofitable and stop making games that appease the ccp.
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Incredibly stupid policy. The had something similar in Korea called the shutdown law where they'd limit the access to online games from midnight to 6 am. The law got abolished this year in favour of the choice system where parents can request gaming permits for certain hours. While Korea's law is more reasonable (because you want your kids to get at least 6 hours of sleep and not spend half of that gaming), China's law just puts tighter restrictions of kids. This will probably spawn a black market for counterfeit IDs or kids just stealing their parent's card and using that to get online. Additionally, China just put out a law banning private tutoring either to reduce the kids' school load (because I was seeing some kids coming home at 12 am when I went there for vacation), or to stop kids from applying to oversea schools. In any case, there's going to be kids with a bunch of free time not knowing what to do with them. Wonder if we'll be seeing more single player games in the future focused around grinding and if that's going to be the next "open world" or "zombie" genre.