“I want to cry.” It’s summer vacation, but 14-year-old Zhang Yuchen has to find a hobby other than his favorite video game. The giant Tencent, the leader of the Chinese market, has imposed a new restriction on its flagship title, the ultra popular. Honor of kings, a success in China with more than 100 million daily active users.
Those under the age of 18 can now only play it for a maximum of two hours a day during the holidays and one hour during school hours. Beyond that, the game is locked. And Chinese teens are concerned: The company announced Wednesday that it intends to extend the new rules … to its entire catalog of games.
Some children can spend the day glued to the screen. A phenomenon long denounced in China for its negative consequences: reduced vision, impact on school results, lack of physical activity or risk of addiction.
Regulations already prohibited minors from playing online between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. But in early August, an article in an official business daily, which particularly singled out Tencent, estimated that video games had become “a mental opium. “. The sector began to fear another turn of the screw.
Stock investors have been detached from the shares of the giants of the sector (Tencent, NetEase, Bilibili …), causing prices to fall. Under pressure, Tencent, which has already imposed limits on playing time and facial recognition to prevent those under 18 from gambling at night, has further tightened the rules.
Was the frenzied reaction of the markets to the article in the official press justified? “Stock market investors overreacted and filled the media machine,” said Ether Yin, an analyst at Trivium China. “It has been since 2018 that the government wants to prevent children from becoming addicted to games,” he says, emphasizing that this trend is not really new. According to him, other video game companies are also expected to publish their own restrictions in the coming weeks.
For many young people, that goes too far. “I’m on vacation. I have nothing else to do and I only have the right to play for a while,” said the plague Li, 17, who refused to give his full name. The young woman considers the measure “distressing”, believing that adolescents of his age, who are almost of legal age and therefore more responsible, can limit their playing time on their own.