TENCENT announced yesterday that it will limit the daily time for youngsters to play its popular
King of Glory game after parents and schools in Shanghai and other areas complained their children
had become addicted to playing it.
From tomorrow, children younger than 12 will only be allowed to play the game for a maximum of one
hour a day, and after 9pm, they will be banned from logging into it, said Tencent. Juveniles older
than 12 will be able to play a maximum two hours a day.
The game system will remind players the time they have been playing and young players will be
forced to log out when the time is up.
Tencent claimed these were the strictest measures in China's game industry to prevent addiction and
the company expected they would ease parents' anxiety.
The company also said it had updated its system for parents to monitor children using its games.
Since February, parents can receive messages when children log in and spend money on the game after
they connect children's game accounts with their mobile phone numbers.
Now, parents can connect phones, tablets or computers that their children use to play games, so
that they can always keep an eye on the children even if they have several game accounts,
Tencent said.
Song Zhe, a father of a Shanghai high school student, welcomed the measures but was not sure if
they would be sufficiently effective.
"I like the system that could lock up the devices as children can register many
accounts," he said."But children are so clever that they can always think out counter measures."