Chinese Regulatory Agency Drafts New Measures To Limit Play Time And Player Spending
Last week, the Chinese government drafted new measures to limit the time that its citizens can spend playing online games while also prohibiting events and capping spending on microtransactions, with a particular focus on gacha rolls and lootboxes.
The law was drafted by the Chinese National Press and Publication istration. The goal is to curb “excessive spending” on online games by requiring developers to warn players against “irrational consumption behavior” with pop-ups, prevent minors from purchasing lootboxes, setting a reasonable pull limit for gacha, and making the exact lootbox or a similar counterpart available for direct purchase.
Unfortunately, the news caused the stock prices of Chinese gaming giants to plummet as investors panicked and promptly began selling huge batches of their stocks. Tencent’s stock prices took a 16% nosedive while NetEase’s plummeted by as much as 25% in the aftermath.
Legal expert Leon Xiao, however, believes that investors needn’t be alarmed as the drafted law includes already existing rules and makes reasonable demands to prevent players from getting sucked into the gambling-like appeal of lootboxes and gacha mechanics.
“Honestly, having read it, I am not sure why the stocks took SUCH a tumble,” Xiao wrote on Mastodon. “Setting monetary spending limits (although how much?) and having pop-up warning windows are both great interventions that are worth trialing.”
The damage has been done, however, and only time will tell whether the Chinese gaming megacorporations will recover from the sudden drops in their stock values or whether the Chinese government will walk back some of the proposed measures.
