Chinese regulators have temporarily slowed their approvals of new online games in the country, as a way to reduce gaming addiction among young people, South China Morning Post reports, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter. Regulators held a meeting on 8 September to discuss with representatives from Tencent and NetEase how they plan to implement Beijing’s new restrictions on video gaming for minors.
According to the same source, the game licensing process was already slowed down for more than a month. New game approvals would be on hold “for a while” because the priority is now to “cut the number of new games” and “reduce gaming addiction” in the country. According to another unnamed person who attended the meeting, delays in the licensing process were needed to “ensure a smooth and successful deployment” of measures to reduce gaming addiction among minors.
In the meeting on Wednesday, which was also attended by the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, representatives of Tencent and NetEase were told to “strictly enforce” the NPPA’s latest rule that limits gaming time for players under the age of 18 to between 20:00 and 21:00 hours only on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays.
In addition, video gaming companies were directed to cleanse their video games by removing what authorities described were the “wrong set of values”, including “worshipping money” and “gay love”.
On 10 September, Tencent announced it would postpone the launch of its most anticipated mobile game this year, League of Legends: Wild Rift, from next week to 1 October for “another round of testing”.
China licenses 592 games in H1
The NPPA, which is in charge of licensing video games in China, has not yet published the list of approved titles for August, breaking its routine of announcing newly licensed games either in the middle or at the end of each month since May 2019. Between 80 to 100 games are usually approved each month.
The NPPA licensed 592 games in the first half of 2021. This compares to 575 games approved in the first half of 2020, and 850 approvals in the same period in 2019.
