Beijing Company Fined for Illegally Providing Online Game Services to Minors

An information technology company in Beijing was warned and fined 100,000 yuan by Beijing police for illegally providing online game services to minors through its self-operated gaming platform. The person in charge of the business was also given an administrative penalty of 10,000 yuan.

On August 21st, in view of the recent concern of minors overindulging in online games, the Law Enforcement Corps of the Beijing Cultural Market carried out a special inspection during which it foundthe company’s irregularities. According to the investigation, there are 6 online mobile games listed on the firm’s platform, which provide online game services to minors from 22:00 pm every day to 8:00 am the next day.

This case is the first one since the police’s special campaign to clean up the network environment particularly for minors. The case will serve as a warning to game suppliers and operators who are not cooperating and preventing minors from overindulging in online games.

According to the notice released by the National Press and Publication Administration in August, all online game enterprises can now only provide services to minors from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays. Companies are not allowed to provide online game services to minors in any form at any other time.

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Despite the new rules, several merchants continued to promote their game rental services throughout the day while offering customer service at any time to users. Chinese state television network CCTV has reported that a new grey area industry chain has been formed in which web users can play online games without various restrictions by simply renting another game account.