Tencent Updates Progress of Preventing Minors’ Addiction to Games

At the 2021 China Game Industry Annual Meeting today, Tencent revealed for the first time its counter-measures and changes after the government’s recent policy regarding the prevention of minors from indulging in online games.

Zheng Lei, head of Tencent‘s minor protection system, said that, on average, 6.86 million accounts use facial recognition to login every day. Over 70% of the accounts that used facial recognition were subject to the anti-addiction supervision as these accounts were declined or failed the verification. The data is up to the month of November 2021.

Zheng Lei admitted Tencent hadn’t proposed any complete solution, but that it would be engaged in the long-term exploration of solutions to the issue. Globally, many countries underwent twists and turns in the policies for the protection of minors, and spent more than a decade in improving the policies. At present, China is responding quickly from the perspective of policy and enterprises, but technical development is needed for future assistance.

Tencent Games is promoting cooperation in different ways. For example, the company has reached cooperation with smartphone makers to equip phones with growth guard platform modules. The company is also promoting the construction of a security guard platform together with the Ministry of Education and has cooperated with operators to install a template for minors on smartphones.

Tencent’s Q3 financial report reflects some of the changes that have happened since the implementation of the policy on September 1, 2021. During the month of September, in Chinese market alone, the game time of minors only accounted for 0.7% of all gaming hours, significantly lower than the 6.4% in the same period last year. Meanwhile, minors accounted for 1.1% of the game revenue in the Chinese market, much lower than 4.8% in the same period last year.

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Zheng Lei said that the change of data is not entirely due to the minor protection policy. In the future, the game industry will rely on the innovation of products, and focus more on the long-term trend of the industry.

He also said Tencent had set up a team to provide technical and implementation assistance through the Group’s joint project team. Zheng added that this action cost as much as 100 million yuan to implement, but the company hasnot encountered any financial or approval obstacles when it was implemented.