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China proposing fresh restrictions on its games market

China proposing fresh restrictions on its games market

China is once again looking to impose tighter regulation on its video game market.

The country's entertainment and content regulator, the National Press and Publication Administration, has released proposed legislation that would see games companies limited in how they could incentivise players to log on to their titles. This includes banning rewards for logging in every day.

Furthermore, the draft legislation demands that games companies have their server hardware within China, as well as saying that games should not feature state secrets or pose a danger to national security.

As a result of these proposed changes to how games businesses in the country, several big names such as Tencent and NetEase have seen big hits to their share price. The former has see a 12.4 per cent dive – its biggest drop in a single day – while the latter has fallen by 24 per cent.

As reported by the FT, Tencent VP Vigo Zhang said that this proposed legislation represents “no fundamental changes” to how it operates as a company.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.