Honor of Kings is the unofficial mobile version of League of Legends. Here, we call the game Arena of Valor. In China, this MOBA is so popular that the government is worried about the health of the Chinese youth. The developer is now relying on facial recognition and mandatory registration.
This is “Honor of Kings”: The Chinese giant Tencent once approached their Riot Games and wanted them to create a “mobile” version of League of Legends, as people in Asia love to play mobile games.
However, Riot refused, so Tencent created a mobile version of League of Legends themselves and named it “Honor of Kings.”
This is the problem: Honor of Kings spread in China like wildfire. Especially children and teenagers play it like crazy. It got to the point where it caught the attention of the Chinese government.
A newspaper close to the Communist Party stated how critical they view the game. They noted a risk of addiction, referred to it as “poison,” and called for regulation.
That must have sounded alarm bells at Tencent.
To preempt censorship by the government, Tencent issued regulations in July 2017:
- Children under 12 may play Honor of Kings for a maximum of one hour a day
- Teenagers between 13 and 18 can play a maximum of 2 hours a day.
The problem here is: How will they know what age the players are?
In March 2018, the CEO of Tencent proposed, teenagers could earn more time for “Honor of Kings” by doing household chores such as washing dishes.
Political climate for gaming in China is changing radically
That was not enough for the government: In recent months, the Chinese government has not been satisfied with that anymore. There have been restructuring efforts behind the scenes, and apparently the position towards games has changed. While gaming in China used to be somewhat tolerated, a cold wind has been blowing there for the past six months.
Now, it is believed that many video games on smartphones are bad for the health of children and teenagers. Many young Chinese suffer from nearsightedness.
Therefore, in August 2018, China began imposing stricter regulations against all video games.
Tencent now wants to severely restrict gaming by minors
Facial recognition as a test: Through this decision and development, Tencent lost 108 billion US dollars as the stock price plummeted. The business site Bloomberg called Tencent the “most disappointing stock in the world.”
To now establish good relations with the government and comply with the regulations, Tencent has started to regulate “Honor of Kings” even more strictly:
- There is now a mandatory registration with real names for new players – the names are then checked against the Chinese “security database” to determine if there are children and teenagers playing who fall under the time limit
- And now they are planning a random check of new players via facial recognition to prevent young players from circumventing the time restrictions
It is still unclear what technology exactly Tencent will use or how the process will work. For now, facial recognition is supposed to be limited to “thousands of new games” in Beijing and Shenzhen.
Why so many people play the MOBA, we discuss in this article:
