China has a new rule for hundreds of millions of young gamers in the country: ban online video games during the school week and one hour a day on Fridays, weekends and holidays.
On Monday, China took new austerity measures to curb what the authorities call youth addiction to video games, which they accuse of a number of social problems, including distracting young people from school and family responsibilities.
According to state media, players under the age of 18 will only be allowed to play online from 8pm to 9pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. This is a maximum of one hour a day for three nights.
“In other cases, it is prohibited to provide minors with online gaming services in any form,” the statement said.
Chinese officials say they made the decision amid growing concerns about teenagers’ addiction to video games, which President Xi Jinping called a “social problem” earlier this year.
The ad actually reinforces the existing curfew for juvenile games, allowing children to play 90 minutes a day or three hours on holidays.
Parents and children will not be those who face punishment for breaking the rules. Instead, China will require all video game companies operating in the country to verify the real names of players so that children cannot break the rules using fake accounts.
China says the new change will protect the “physical and mental health” of its children.
These rules were published by the National Administration of Press and Publications, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The change is expected to place additional demands on video game makers such as Tencent, the Chinese maker League of Legends and the popular Call of Duty franchise, which are mostly played online. Tencent recently introduced face recognition software to keep up with China’s earlier curfew for underage players.
The new restriction is just one of many affecting the Chinese Internet, which is effectively isolated from the global network and tightly controlled by censors. Restrictions are used to ban a wide range of malicious content, but they are also used to censor free speech and silence anything or anything that the Chinese Communist Party considers a threat – be it karaoke songs or Winnie the Pooh.