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Tencent donated 100 sports fields on the first day under China’s strictest video game age restriction mandate

By Kongru
Sep. 1, 2021 updated 07:25

On Aug 30th, the National Press and Publication Administration of China have enacted the strictest mandate so far to restrict game time for players under the age of 18.

 Video game content and service providers can only allow underaged players to play from 20:00 to 21:00 on Fridays, Saturdays Sundays, and other legal holidays. So a typical teenage gamer can play only 3 hours of video games every week.

 Today (September 1st) marks the first day that this mandate is active. In the past 2 days, most Chinese game companies showed their support to the new mandate. Tencent, the largest video game company in the world declared its support in just a few hours after the mandate was officially enacted.

 

The rest of the herd also claims they would follow the mandate “Actively”, “in the strictest way possible”, including Shengqu Games, the local operator of Final Fantasy XIV;

 

And miHoYo, developer of Genshin Impact.

 

Netease, Lilith Games (AFK Arena), IGG (Lords Mobile), 360 Games (Local operator of World of Tanks), X.D Network, CMGE, ZTGame, 37, and the rest of the video game companies also announced their support for the mandate in the first two days after its enaction.

 Although most pro players are teenagers, the esports scene is no exception to the new rules. Some esports organizations are already starting to apply age restrictions on the participating players.

Game of Peace (Chinese version of PUBG M) official professional league PEL announced that they are taking action to verify the age of all pro players. KPL, the pro league of Arena of Valor is taking one step further, stopping all underaged pro players from participating altogether.

Today, Tencent announced its new plan to further protect and benefit minors in China, including a project called “double 100 for mind and body”, aiming to donate 100 “classrooms for the future” and 100 “happy sports fields” for kids in less developed regions.

Tencent claims this project is to provide more service and support for the minors, to divert their attention away from video games.

The 100 “Classrooms for the Future” has already been put into practice, and the sports fields are in planning. This project has covered 9 schools in 4 provinces of China, granting access to modern technology education, including VR, AI, and hardware programming to more than 10,000 students