Chinese Gaming Firms Vow Self-Regulation Amid Crackdown on Teen Addiction

Over 200 Chinese gaming corporations have pledged to control their business to fight gaming dependancy, together with via the attainable use of facial recognition to determine minors, a state-backed gaming affiliation stated on Friday.

The assertion, printed by the CGIGC gaming affiliation, which is affiliated to the web sport publishing regulator National Press and Publication (NPPA), on its official WeChat account, was signed by 213 corporations together with Tencent and NetEase.

China has expressed robust concern over rising online game dependancy amongst its youth and the NPPA final month printed new guidelines that forbid under-18s from taking part in video video games for greater than three hours every week. Companies and traders fear extra actions towards the business might be in retailer.

The corporations additionally pledged to crack down on content material that distort historical past or promote “effeminate” behaviour and also will work to forestall breaches of those guidelines, comparable to using overseas gaming platforms, the CGIGC stated.

Tencent in July rolled out a facial recognition perform dubbed “midnight patrol” that oldsters can swap on to forestall youngsters from utilizing grownup logins to get across the authorities curfew.

© Thomson Reuters 2021