On August 4, Capital Bang learned that a recent report on minors addicted to online games-"spiritual opium" has grown into a hundreds of billions of industries "sparked heated debate in the outside world." the article named Tencent "Arena of Valor" and said that "the punishment should be kept up with at the same time."
Commentators believe that it is urgent to promote the healthy development of China's game industry. Effective prevention of addiction should be the bottom line for the safe development of game enterprises. we should not only put forward higher requirements for game enterprises, strictly prohibit children under the age of 12 from participating in all kinds of online games, but also further restrict them legally and establish a grading system. implement the blacklist system for problem game enterprises to achieve substantial results in anti-addiction work.
As soon as the report came out, Tencent quickly launched a new measure of "double reducing doubles" in response to questions about "underage protection": implementing a more stringent online time limit for underage users than the policy, reducing non-holidays from 1.5 hours to 1 hour. holidays are reduced from 3 hours to 2 hours, and minors under the age of 12 are prohibited from spending in the game.
In addition, in addition to Tencent, another game giant, NetEase Inc Games, has also recently announced network rectification measures. NetEase Inc said that the campaign of "Special rectification of the Internet Environment for minors in Summer" was launched in 2021. Resolutely crack down on network problems that endanger the physical and mental health of minors, and create a healthy and green network environment for young people. In addition to real-name authentication of game accounts, there are also reasonable restrictions on minors' game time and game consumption. NetEase Inc's existing anti-addiction system will also take advantage of the summer special action to further upgrade. NetEase Inc's game will add more technical identification means such as behavior identification in the identification of minors to evade addiction prevention certification, so as to improve the accuracy of identification and achieve stricter control.
However, affected by the report, the whole Hong Kong game stocks plunged on August 3: Tencent fell by more than 10%, NetEase Inc by more than 15%, Bilibili by more than 13%, Chinese mobile games by more than 22%, heartbeat company by more than 21%, Dream World, Baiao family interaction, Zulong Entertainment, Friendship time, IGG, Sky Pigeon interaction and so on.
Even, the A-share game sector also fell collectively, with several head game companies, such as Gigabit, Panax Notoginseng Entertainment, perfect Technology, Shun net Technology, and so on, all down more than 2% in intraday trading.
In fact, the regulation of the game industry has been proposed as early as several years ago, including the newly revised "Law on the Protection of minors" also has certain restrictions on minors on games and recharge. Now, after the anti-monopoly law, the Internet industry has entered the stage of industrial structure adjustment and standardized treatment, and various policies have been introduced to change the disadvantages brought about by the outbreak of the Internet. In the future, we do not rule out the possibility that the regulatory authorities will continue to follow up and reform the game industry, a large number of Internet companies, especially the Internet companies with games as the main business, or welcome the new supervision.
In fact, several Chinese Internet giants have experienced a sharp fall in their share prices so far this year. Tencent, for example, has been falling since hitting an all-time high of HK $773.4 on February 18, and its shares fell to HK $446 by the close of trading yesterday, down less than 40 per cent in half a year.
As of press time, Tencent's Hong Kong shares rose 3.5% to HK $461.6, with a total market capitalization of HK $4.4 trillion.