China Puts Heavier Restrictions on Games for Kids

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who likes China if they haven’t been brainwashed or paid to do it, and gamers have more reason than most (if you don’t count political prisoners, normal prisoners, ethnic minorities, and oppressed freedom fighters) to dislike the regime. China has a long history of not only censoring and controlling what they let their own players play, but also extending that censorship beyond their boarders if they feel it’s necessary. And for many companies, choosing to placate the Chinese at the cost of their home audience is an easy choice to make.

This most recent Chinese law, fortunately, won’t impact the west at all, but it still kind of sucks for any hardcore gamers who are trying to grow up in the red state.

It puts a hard limit of play-time for anyone under 18 in the country: you’ll be limited to 90 minutes a day, and between 10 PM and 8 AM, you’ll be unable to play at all. That 90 minutes goes up to 180 during weekends, but the hours are hard-set, so you’ll have to find something else to keep you entertained late in the evening… until you’re 18 years old, I suppose.

The goal of this law, as one might suspect, is to tackle “addiction, nearsightedness, and poor academic performance”.

This will be enforced with the fact that children will need to sign up to online games with their real names and a form of identification. Presumably, offline games are under no such restriction.

While it could be argued that there’s nothing explicitly wrong with limiting a child’s time with video games, government overreach is never a good thing, and moreover, forcing them to sign up with their real names and identities opens them up to potential privacy problems if that data ever leaks. Which it almost certainly will.

Good thing nearsighted, stupid addicts like us don’t have to worry about that, huh?