Children and teenagers in China will find it harder to play at night. The fact is that Tencent, China’s largest game and software developer, has begun to implement facial recognition technology to prevent minors from playing games instead of sleeping. This was the company’s response to tougher rules on computer games and the introduction of time limits for minors. Now in China there is a law that prohibits children and adolescents from playing games between 10:00 pm and 8:00 am the next day.
Users who want to continue playing after 10 p.m. are now required to verify their identity using a facial recognition system, Tencent said in a press release. Simply put, if the user wants to play at night, then he will have to go through a check using the smartphone camera, and if the artificial intelligence-based system determines that a person is under 18 in front of her, then access to the game will be blocked. In case of refusal to check, the user will be considered a minor by default, and the game will automatically stop working for the duration of the “curfew”. The new feature has so far been activated in 60 of Tencent’s mobile games, including the likes of Honor of Kings and Game for Peace, but Tencent is promising to introduce facial recognition into other games over time.
Recall that a couple of years ago, the Chinese authorities in charge of regulating the gaming industry introduced new restrictions requiring Chinese game companies to implement various identity verification systems in their games and limits on the amount of time and money that children can spend on the application. On weekdays, children and adolescents can play for no more than 90 minutes, and on weekends and holidays – up to three hours. But underage gamblers easily bypassed the restrictions, and therefore Tencent decided to bring biometrics and artificial intelligence to help. The company admits that while the system may work with errors, and if an adult user was accidentally identified as a minor, then he just needs to go through the check again
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