China is in the midst of a major clampdown on who can play online video games and for how long. The government already stopped approving new games in any great numbers earlier this year. Then last month, the Chinese Ministry of Education announced online game access would be restricted to save children's eyes, referring to the myopia problems the country faces.
It all sounds like a lot of excuses just to exert more control over the gaming sector, but it is forcing some of the biggest video game companies in the world, let alone China, to react. As Reuters reports, the first of those is Tencent who is set to introduce a real name registration system later this month.
China intends to limit the amount of time children can play games online as they see extended play as a major cause of nearsightedness. In order to limit play, you need to know who players are. Tencent is doing that by introducing a real name registration system on Sept. 15 linked to China's public security database. In doing so, underage players will automatically be identified and Tencent can trigger a time limit.
The first game to require player identity registration will be Honour of King (known as Wangzhe Rongyao in China), which is a very popular iOS and Android fantasy MMO having over 200 million players. The game has faced criticism in the past and accusations of being addictive. Tencent already limits play time to one hour for the under 12s, and two hours for anyone aged 12-18, but it's unclear how the company confirms what age players are at the moment.
As Tencent already imposes play time restrictions, this looks to be just a minor change for the game. However, the Chinese government will want the same level of control implemented across all online games, which is sure to be an expensive headache for all game operators in China.