"I want to cry."
It's summer vacation, but 14-year-old Zhang Yuchen has to find a hobby other than his favorite video game.
The giant Tencent, leader of the Chinese market, has indeed imposed a new restriction on its flagship title, the ultra popular
Honor of Kings
, a hit in China with more than 100 million daily active users.
Under-18s can now only play it for two hours a day maximum during holidays and one hour during school periods.
Beyond that, the game is locked.
And Chinese teens are worried: the company announced Wednesday that it intends to extend the new rules ... to its entire catalog of games.
Some children can spend their days glued to their screen.
A phenomenon long decried in China for its negative consequences: reduced vision, impact on school results, lack of physical activity or risk of addiction.
A sector under pressure
Regulations already prohibited minors from playing online between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
But in early August, an article in an official economic daily, which particularly pinned Tencent, estimated that video games had become "a mental opium".
The sector began to fear another turn of the screw.
Stock market investors have shed the stocks of the giants of the sector (Tencent, NetEase, Bilibili…), causing prices to plunge.
Under pressure, Tencent, which already imposed limits on playing time and facial recognition to prevent under-18s from playing at night, has toughened the rules even further.
"Investors overreacted"
Was the frantic reaction of the markets to the article in the official press justified? "The stock market investors overreacted and it packed the media machine," said Ether Yin, analyst at Trivium China. "It's been since 2018 that the government wants to prevent children from becoming addicted to games," he notes, stressing that this trend is not really new. According to him, other video game companies are also expected to publish their own restrictions in the coming weeks.
For many young people, that goes too far.
"I'm on vacation.
I have nothing else to do and I only have the right to play for a little while, ”plague Li, 17, who declined to give his full name.
The young girl considers the measure "distressing", believing that adolescents of her age, almost of age and therefore more responsible, can limit their playing time on their own.
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