The strictest "travel restriction order" is coming! Is the game company still "playing"?

The leisure needs of minors may shift to short videos.

Wen | Liu Yuanju

On August 3th, the State Press and Publication Administration issued the Notice on Further Strict Management to Effectively Prevent Minors from Indulging in Online Games (hereinafter referred to as the Notice) at the beginning of the new semester.

The Notice requires that the time for providing online game services to minors be strictly limited. All online game companies can only provide one-hour services to minors from 2: to 21: every day on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays, and they are not allowed to provide online game services to minors in any form at other times.

Some netizens rated this "travel restriction order" as "the strictest in history".

More than one enterprise has already taken the initiative to shrink

On the evening of August 3th, Beijing time, before the US stock market closed, Netease's share price plummeted by over 8%, and dropped by over 5%. On the same day, game makers including Tencent, Netease, China Mobile Games and Mihayou responded quickly, saying that they would strictly abide by the new regulations and actively implement them.

However, although this new regulation has aroused strong public opinion and the reaction of the capital market, from the perspective of the industry, the impact may not be as "emotional" as the public opinion shows.

many enterprises have already taken the initiative to shrink before the new regulations.

Tencent has said that it will gradually introduce seven new measures of "double reduction, doubles and three promotion" for the protection of minors from the the glory of the king pilot, so as to reduce the duration of minors' games again and prohibit minors under 12 from recharging.

The "double reduction" here refers to a stricter restriction on the online time of underage users, from 1.5 hours on non-holidays to 1 hour, and from 3 hours on holidays to 2 hours.

In addition, Tencent also proposes that the whole industry discuss the possibility of completely banning primary school students under the age of 12 from playing games.

IGG, a listed online game company in Hong Kong, also announced that its products "Kingdom Era" and "Princess of Time" will comprehensively strengthen the protection measures for minors. Reduce the playing time of minors in an all-round way: underage users are forbidden to play from 22: to 8: the next day, and are limited to 2 hours a day on national statutory holidays (previously limited to 3 hours a day), and 1 hour a day at other times (previously limited to 1.5 hours a day). Under the new measures, minors play only 9 hours a week, which is 4.5 hours less than before.

Youzu Network, a game platform, said that in terms of game duration, Youzu Network clearly stipulated that players under the age of 18 who play for more than 1.5 hours a day on non-holidays and 3 hours a day on holidays will be forced to log off the line and cannot log in to the game again.

2 minors have little influence on the income of game companies

This shows that the giants in the game industry have carried out a series of self-control.

On the one hand, this control is the response of these enterprises to policies and public opinion; On the other hand, this control is also because minors have little impact on the income of game companies.

Recently, Tencent released its second-quarter financial report, which revealed for the first time the proportion of contributions made by underage gamers under 12. In the second quarter of this year, players under the age of 16 accounted for 2.6% of Tencent's games in China, among which players under the age of 12 accounted for .3%.

So, on the whole, minors have little influence on the income of the game industry.

Of course, there may be cases of identity fraud.

however, in preventing fraudulent use of identity, companies have implemented AI technology and biometric technology to ensure "person-ID correspondence" and prevent users from fabricating identity information and passing verification. Therefore, the proportion of identity fraudulent use will not be large.

3 It is difficult to use face recognition in games

According to Tencent's data, in face recognition, as of February 24th, face recognition verification for suspected underage users has been applied to more than 1 mobile game products of Tencent. In the past month, an average of 7.24 million accounts were logged in every day, and 6, accounts triggered face recognition verification in payment.

among them, about 9.5% of the accounts were included in the anti-addiction supervision in the login process, and about 8% of the accounts were intercepted in the payment process.

In order to solve the problem that "children use their parents' information fraudulently to bypass the anti-addiction restrictions of games", some companies have strengthened the screening of accounts whose real names are adults, but which are suspected to be used by minors.

However, it should be noted that there are some difficulties in the promotion of face recognition.

excessive use of face recognition may lead to information leakage. In recent years, it has been exposed from time to time that some Internet companies have technology abuse, privately collecting, trading and leaking users' sensitive information, which seriously infringes on users' personal rights and interests.

in addition, the game belongs to leisure time, such as in the bathroom, in bed, and in the case of untidy clothes, requiring users to recognize their faces may cause privacy problems and strong resentment of users.

4 "Travel Restriction Order" may cause users to transfer

At present, there are not many game manufacturers who have proposed new measures for the protection of minors, but it is the general trend for the whole game industry to promote the protection of minors.

In terms of industry income, because the proportion of minors is not high, restrictions on minors may not have a great impact, but because small companies will be weaker in content review, it may lead to minor users being more addicted to it, and this part of the impact should be prevented in advance.

In addition, it may be a trend for minor users to transfer to foreign game manufacturers. Relatively speaking, this kind of transfer may occur more in older minors, such as from the fourth and fifth grades of primary school to the second grade of high school.

Students in this age group are proficient in surfing the Internet, and may even use various tools to connect to foreign servers and play games provided by foreign game companies. However, due to the small size of these minors, it will not have much impact on the global or China game market.

In addition, the game needs of some minors may shift to stand-alone games. This may lead to the growth of the stand-alone game market.

From the industry point of view, the leisure needs of minors may also shift to short videos, but short videos are affected by relevant policies, and it is only a matter of time before relevant restrictions are introduced.

However, the content of short videos is more diverse. Unlike online games, some of the content of the former has educational significance, which puts forward higher requirements for management regulations.