Well, Chinese kids, hope “after 10pm” isn’t the only time you have to play games.
Per Gizmodo, Tencent has a solution to minors in China playing games for over either 90 minutes or past 10 pm; facial recognition.
They call the system “Midnight Patrol” (which sounds like a great band name); it requires anyone playing to have their face scanned. That scan is then matched to a registered profile which contains the user’s legal name and age. And if the user is a minor, the above stated hard limits are applied to their session.
This is all necessary to comply with China’s laws on the matter. Passed in 2019 in some obviously ill-fated attempt to stem myopia, minors are only allowed to play games for 90 minutes per weekday, 180 minutes on any given weekend day, and only between the hours of 8am and 10pm.
The new system enforces these laws, by making it so that games will force close upon the occurrence of a limiting factor; either 90 minute playtime or 10pm.Around 60 percent of Tencent’s games will use the system, which is probably necessary to keep the company from being in hot water with the government. If successful, the system will probably expand to cover all of Tencent’s titles.
Granted, it’s not hard t imagine minors trying to get around the system. Maybe through the use of masks or pictures of adults, or maybe they’ll all become Juggalos. That said, any attempt to circumvent the system, either by unsuccessfully tricking it (likely) or simply refusing the facial scan, will treat the user as a minor, with all the restrictions that apply.
Source: PC Mag
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