China’s New Internet Regulations for Minors

A new Internet policy in web-using is a crushing force for China could affect the online gaming experience of many Chinese minors, defined as anyone under age 18. The two new policies call for minors to no longer have available virtual currency , except in games themselves, and for online games to be moral and limit the hours people can play them to an acceptable amount. And they demand all this in extremely vague terms.

Beginning with online currency, because it’s simpler and has a far narrower scope, all this regulation really does is disallow website platforms designed for the trading of virtual currency. In-game economies will be unaffected, but gamers won’t be able to use external sites to trade real currency for virtual currency, or trade one virtual currency for another. All the fake money will stay in the fake world from which it came.

According to xinhuanet.com there’s the new moral regulation, devoid of nearly any details whatsoever.

Horrifying, cruel or other content that is “unwholesome” is forbidden and measures must be developed to keep minors away from “inappropriate games,” say the regulations.
The regulations offer no definition of “unwholesome” content, but explicitly forbid content advocating pornography, cults, superstitions, gambling and violence in all online games.

That list of explicitly forbidden themes is about as detailed as we’re going to get here. Beyond them, the definition of unwholesome is left up to game developers. In a few months it is likely that it will left up to the courts.

Games will be disallowed unreasonable durations of continuous play time, even though the amount of time and the methods to stop is not detailed. Its not clarified whether it would violate the policy for games to allow minors to jump from game to game, playing only a hour on each. Its seems like it can’t be regulated, and even more unlikely that it could be enforced. So the overall playtime will have limited effects.

Series of deaths, beatings and escapes from Chinese Internet boot camps has caused much of the controversy around online gaming, where military techniques are employed to eliminate addictions to online gaming and other Internet use. If there aren’t some clearer guidelines put in place soon, the legal battles that may arise from this, or the controversy surrounding unjust game shut-downs, could make the problem worse than it already is.