What’s trending?

In recent years, Chinese gaming regulators have come up with many methods, from real-name registration to setting time and spending limits on mobile games, to curb young gamers’ “addiction” and excessive screen time. Now, a new rule from internet giant Tencent may help the anti-addiction campaigners achieve more effective results. And that is all because of facial recognition technology that is being widely used across many sectors of the country.

What’s the story?

Tencent has started adopting what it calls a harsher anti-addiction measure aimed at preventing minors from stealing their parents’ accounts to play its mobile games.

For adult accounts suspected of being used by minors, players will be required to scan their faces for identity verification when they log in to mobile games, with their scanned faces then matched with data collected by the government.

Those who refuse to accept the rule, or are identified as minors after the identity verification, will be subject to a previously set national guidelines that limit players aged 18 or below to playing online games only between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., with no more than 1.5 hours each day or three hours on holidays.

In addition, the gaming platform will also raise the face scanning requirement on “suspicious accounts” if the player spends more than 400 yuan ($57) for in-game payment purposes in any single month. However, Tencent did not explain how it would detect such “suspicious accounts”.

Currently Tencent is piloting the new rule on its popular titles, “Peacekeeper Elite” and “Honor of Kings”, and plans to expand it to all of its mobile games.

What are people saying online?

The new anti-addiction rule has sparked heated discussions in China’s internet world. While many internet users have thrown their support, some have voiced concerns over data security problems. “Hope the public security departments and Tencent could use our facial data in a way that would not cause damage to us,” a Weibo user wrote.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)