China seems to have backtracked on strict rules to combat what the regulator deemed “obsessive” gaming.
China’s National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) had proposed regulations to limit the amount of money and time people spent playing video games, but the draft rules were no longer on the NPPA website as of Tuesday.
The new rules would have limited in-game purchases, incentives such as daily log-in rewards for gamers, and proposed pop-up warning players of “irrational” behavior.
However, the sector is still clouded by uncertainty about what the government might do next . Share prices of Chinese gaming firms, including Tencent Holdings and NetEase, had plummeted after the rules were first proposed in December, wiping nearly $80bn (£63bn) off the value of the two companies. But they jumped after the apparent U-turn.
China’s largest crackdown on gamers came in 2021 when children were banned from playing for more than an hour on certain days. That same year, the government stopped gaming licenses from being granted for eight months. As a result, many Chinese developers have started shifting their development pipeline toward overseas games
