2023-12-22 09:59:46
China is waging war against microtransactions by limiting player spending in online games. Hard blow for the Chinese video game giants who have been heavily punished by the stock market.
Source: Photo by SCREEN POST on Unsplash
Hard blow for the Chinese video game market: the country’s regulators have established new rules for publishers to curb commercial practices deemed abusive.
Reward incentives, via reward and regular connection mechanisms, are particularly targeted by this new regulation. Following these announcements, Tencent lost nearly $46 billion in stock market value, indicating the great concern of an entire industry.
Curb the incentive to spend on video games
At the heart of these new rules is an imposed spending limit for online games, particularly on mobile. Players will no longer be able to top up their account as much as they want and alerts will even be sent for “irrational spending”.
The objective here is to reduce as much as possible my microtransactions allowing the purchase of cosmetics, characters or game modifiers, a monetization lever now very established, particularly in games Gacha coming from Japan.
PUBG became Game for Peace in China in 2019 to appease regulators // Source: Tencent
Publishers will also be prohibited from offering rewards that encourage players to log in daily, but also when they regularly spend within a microtransaction storefront.
These mechanisms are singled out as vectors of addiction and excessive spending. Regulators also plan to ban any live broadcast of players spending large sums of money. So no more streams of players buying all the cosmetics in one go Battle Pass.
Protecting children from lootboxes
One of the rules issued by the National Press and Publication Administrations concerns loot boxes which will now be prohibited for minors. On this point, Europe is clearly lagging behind, while legislation is struggling to evolve and children and adolescents have no limitations regarding microtransactions and lootboxes.
This is not the first time that China has focused on the habits of the country’s young players: as recalled Archyde.comall THE gamers under 18 have had their playing time limited in 2019 as well as in 2021 at three hours per week.
But another decision should appease, as much as possible, the major players in Chinese video games: regulators will have to launch the game approval processes within 60 days. Relations between publishers and the government have always been tense, a confrontation which came to a head when regulators stopped approving any video games for eight months, between July 2021 and April 2022.
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