How Tencents sweeping new facial scans will catch Chinese kids playing past curfew

Tencent, the biggest game company in the world, is rolling out facial recognition technology that will likely scan many gamers’ faces every single evening, aiming to catch minors breaking a gaming curfew and help prevent video game addiction (via Gizmodo). That’s a lot of controversial concepts in one sentence, no?

Here’s what’s going on, according to the company and China games industry analyst Daniel Ahmad.

In China, video game addiction prevention is literally the law of the land, one that’s been evolving for many years but recently hit some important milestones. In 2019, China introduced a law that banned minors from playing video games between 10PM and 8AM or from playing more than 90 minutes on a weekday. And as of June 1st, 2021,...

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