Interfax is reporting that the Chinese communist government unveiled new regulations on Tuesday that prohibit minors under the age of 18 from playing violent online games, which currently dominate the Chinese online gaming market. Effective immediately, all minors are banned from playing online games in which players are allowed to kill other players, an activity that has been termed Player Kills (PK).
China’s Ministry of Culture (MOC) and Ministry of Information Industry (MII) have also ordered the country’s online game operators to develop identity authentication systems that prevent minors from playing games These authentication systems would require all players to first enter their Citizen ID Card numbers before being allowed to play games that allow Player Kills. No timetable was given for when these authentication systems must be implemented.
“Minors should not be allowed to play online games that have PK content, that allow players to increase the power of their own online game characters by killing other players,” Liu Shifa, head of the MOC’s Internet Culture Division, which drafts policies governing the online gaming market, told Interfax. “Online games that have PK content usually also contain acts of violence and leads to players spending too much time trying to increase the power of their characters. They are harmful to young people.”
