gaming

Tencent using facial recognition to keep China’s minors from gaming too much

Victor Barreiro Jr.

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Tencent using facial recognition to keep China’s minors from gaming too much

TENCENT. A logo of Tencent is seen during the World Internet Conference (WIC) in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China, November 23, 2020.

Aly Song/Reuters

With the 'Midnight Patrol' system, gamers will need to have their face scanned periodically to gauge their age and permit play for adults during curfew hours

Chinese company Tencent announced Tuesday, July 6, it was going to use facial recognition to prevent minors from playing video games excessively.

In a statement, Tencent said its system, which Digital Trends reported was called “Midnight Patrol,” is now live in China. It will monitor players and detect those spending a “significant amount of time” online at night.

Tencent said players will need to have their face scanned if they wish to continue playing. Those who avoid the scan are automatically deemed minors, shutting the game down. Adults mistakenly taken off their gaming binge can have their face scanned again to continue playing.

This follows the passing of an anti-gaming addiction bill in 2019, which would set a curfew for minors – those under 18 cannot play games from 10 pm to 8 am – to prevent them from spending too much time gaming.

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Gizmodo, in its report, cited Sixth Tone, a Chinese state-owned English-language media outlet aimed at foreigners, which cited a number of factors for the implementation.

These included occurrences of alleged theft by teenagers looking to fund microtransaction spending and reports of China’s young people spending too much time at internet cafes – where they can access the hardware to play games without necessarily owning a machine themselves.

Tencent said the implementation of Midnight Patrol is available on 60 of its games, such as Glory of the King and Peace Elite.

That said, Digital Trends says Tencent’s Riot-led multiplayer online battle arena game League of Legends is not yet on the list, at least for now. – Rappler.com

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Victor Barreiro Jr.

Victor Barreiro Jr is part of Rappler's Central Desk. An avid patron of role-playing games and science fiction and fantasy shows, he also yearns to do good in the world, and hopes his work with Rappler helps to increase the good that's out there.