The official government guidelines will be applied to all online gaming platforms operating in the country, mostly notably Tencent, the world's biggest gaming company. Under the new rules, gamers aged under 18 will be banned from playing online games between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. On weekdays, minors can only play for 90 minutes, while they may play up to three hours per day on weekends and public holidays.
The guidelines also place restrictions on the amount of money minors can transfer to their online gaming accounts. Gamers aged between eight and 16 years old can only top up 200 yuan ($29) per month, while the maximum amount for those between 16 and 18 will be 400 yuan ($57).
Speaking to the state-run Xinhua News Agency, a spokesman for the administration said the new rules were aimed at creating a "clear internet space" and "protecting the physical and mental health of minors."
"(This notice) has emphasized on the responsibility of the corporations, and has executed the government's duty to supervise the problem," the spokesman said.
The administration is also working with police to set up a real-name registration system, and to enable gaming companies to check the identity of their users against the national database, he added.
The new guidelines are China's latest move in an ongoing campaign to increase regulation of the gaming industry. In August 2018, Beijing announced plans to limit the number of new online games to "reduce nearsightedness in children and adolescents." It also criticized a popular mobile game, "Honor of Kings", for allegedly causing addiction in young people in 2017.
China's new directives implicate adult gamers too. A state spokesperson says that everyone, regardless of age, is prohibited from playing games that depict "sexual explicitness, goriness, violence and gambling."
Chinese officials will also require everyone to register accounts for online games using their real name and phone number, which will help government entities to regulate playing time.
"The State Administration of Press and Publication is working with the Ministry of Public Security to lead the building of a unified identification system, which would provide user identification services to video game companies, so that they can accurately verify the identity of minors," a government statement said. "We are also going to gradually perfect and enrich the functions of the identification system, to achieve gaming time data sharing across platforms, so we could know and therefore restrict the total time every minor spends on gaming across platforms."
It is not clear how offline single-player games factor into the new guidelines.
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