Starting from now, players in China will have to undergo a digital lock system on Players Unknown BattleGround (PUBG). From here on, PUBG would require users to login via a digital lock system to ascertain if the user is under 13 years of age or not.
Tencent will continually bring the digital lock system on PUBG and some of its other games such as Honour of Kings and others in China. The game will effectively lock out users under 13 years of age. It would use techniques ranging from facial recognition to using player’s ID to ascertain the age of the user and grant access to the game. For kids under 13, they would require a guardian’s credentials to access the game but there is a catch too.
China government which is known for throttling aspects of the internet will also exercise its control on how long young players will be able to play the games and other rules surrounding the same. The government will also throttle how much game content young players consume apart from the regular banned content related to gambling, pornography, violence, national politics or anything that the government has deemed as ‘damaging behavior’.
Last year, China imposed a nine-month freeze on new video games that ended in December itself. On the other hand, PUBG is one of the fastest growing multiplayer battle royale game that allows a hundred participants to play at real-time and has often summoned as the reason behind long hours of gaming and increasing addiction towards the same.
PUBG is in its fourth season with Zombie Mode enabled recently on PCs, Xbox, and smartphones. It is a cross-platform game available on almost all major OS including Windows, Android, iOS, etc. It is also one of the popular game in India which is the second country in terms of population to China.
