Imagine if you were on your computer playing whatever video-game you love, Fortnite, Minecraft, or even Call of Duty, and then after a certain amount of time, the game stops completely. What would you do about it? Imagine if the government said that you could only play for a certain number of minutes during the week, weekends, and holidays. Unfortunately Chinese gamers don’t have to imagine. For Chinese gamers, this is now a reality. 

Why would China be doing that? It seems that the government of China has done research on the effects of gaming at night. Negative effects of nighttime gaming include addiction, mental health issues and more. The World Health Organisation officially classified video game addiction as a disorder in April. Because of these problems, the Chinese government has put a stop to the long hours of gaming at night. These limits will allow kids under the age of 18 to play games for 90 minutes or less during the week, and up to 3 hours max during the holidays and weekends.

On top of that, kids who love to play video games all night long are no longer allowed to have fake names or fake identification numbers to play. Gamers must make an account with their real name, email, and identification number for different video games at night. If not, they won’t be able to play. Companies and businesses are also forced to enforce these certain guidelines on gamers under the age of 18. The most popular thing miners would do is use their parent’s numbers just to get around the age restriction policy. If kids in the country of China try to do that now, they won’t get very far. For the time being, it looks like their dreams of nightly gaming are impossible.