For those comparing to western standards, note that this is just an increase on existing regulation. According to wikipedia[0], China has had regulation limiting underage video game play time from as early as 2005, meaning that most children there have never actually lived in times when underage unrestricted play was allowed. So in terms of "voice", this is akin to parents deciding what's good for children, except on a national scale.<p>> China has sought to deal with addiction to video games by its youth by enacting regulations to be implemented by video game publishers aimed to limit consecutive play time particularly for children. As early as 2005 China's Ministry of Culture has enacted several public health efforts to address gaming and internet related disorders. One of the first systems required by the government was launched in 2005 to regulate adolescents' Internet use, including limiting daily gaming time to 3 hours and requiring users' identification in online video games. In 2007, an "Online Game Anti-Addiction System" was implemented for minors, restricting their use to 3 hours or less per day. The ministry also proposed a "Comprehensive Prevention Program Plan for Minors’ Online Gaming Addiction" in 2013, to promulgate research, particularly on diagnostic methods and interventions. China's Ministry of Education in 2018 announced that new regulations would be introduced to further limit the amount of time spent by minors in online games. While these regulations were not immediately binding, most large Chinese publishers took steps to implement the required features. For example, Tencent restricted the amount of time that children could spend playing one of its online games, to one hour per day for children 12 and under, and two hours per day for children aged 13-18. This is facilitated by tracking players via their state-issued identification numbers. This has put some pressure on Western companies that publish via partners in China on how to apply these new anti-addiction requirements into their games, as outside of China, tracking younger players frequently raises privacy concerns. Specialized versions of games, developed by the Chinese partner, have been made to meet these requirements without affecting the rest of the world; Riot Games let its China-based studio implement the requirements into League of Legends for specialized release in China.<p>> A new law enacted in November 2019 limits children under 18 to less than 90 minutes of playing video games on weekdays and three hours on weekends, with no video game playing allowed between 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. These are set by requiring game publishers to enforce these limits based on user logins. Additionally, the law limits how much any player can spend on microtransactions, ranging from about $28 to $57 per month depending on the age of the player.[126] In September 2020, the government implemented its own name-based authentication system to be made available to all companies to uphold these laws.[1]<p>So China is quite serious about it, even going as far as tying playtime to their national id system (which westerners are probably going to balk at), and imposing limits to micro-transactions for underage players (which, I think, is actually a good thing). It's interesting that eyesight issues are also brought up as a rationale (especially considering the school cramming culture there). Kind of a mixed bag IMHO, but alas, what'd you expect from mass-implemented regulations?<p>[0][1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China#Government_oversight" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China#Governmen...</a>.