Chinese Official Fired After Backlash Over Latest Gaming Industry Regulatory Plans
from the blame-game dept
The war on China’s video game industry by the Chinese government continues, but it appears that its casualties aren’t only within the industry itself. Over the last couple of years, the Chinese government has put more and more restrictions on the gaming industry, primarily aimed at youths, that were designed for everything from restricting how long games can be played, to how much time they can spend watching video game streams, and so on. There was a bunch of talk early on about so-called “video game addiction”, except the government more recently declared victory over that addiction. Meanwhile, to date, all of those actions have resulted in thousands of businesses in or reliant on the gaming industry closing their doors and packing it all up.
That bloodbath wasn’t good enough for Beijing, it appears, as regulators within the government published a draft of new regulations that would severely curtail gaming companies’ ability to create games with in-game purchases, reward daily play, or incentivize longer play-times. You know, basically everything that is modern gaming these days. The reaction to these announced plans was swift and brutal.
In Hong Kong, shares of internet giant Tencent, which has stakes in game developers, closed 12% lower to notch its biggest one-day drop since 2008.
Shares of online gaming competitor Netease also tumbled 25% during Asian trading hours, and the Hang Seng Tech Index dropped 4.37%.
There were knock-on effects from non-Chinese companies in other markets too, but the most blood was spilled directly in China out of Chinese companies’ stock values. Anyone who knows the first thing about Chinese politics will know that these drafted regulations were not the work product of one individual going rogue and almost certainly went through several layers of approvals before they ever saw the light of day.
But that informed individual will also not be surprised to learn that the Chinese government’s response to the backlash wasn’t merely walking the new regs back, but offering up a single individual as a sacrificial lamb.
Feng Shixin was the head of the publishing unit of the Chinese Communist Party’s publicity department. In this position, Feng had oversight of China’s video game regulator. Feng was fired last week, according to a Reuters report published Tuesday.
Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that Feng’s departure was linked to the slate of proposed video game restrictions announced on December 22.
This is pure single-party face-saving by the Chinese government, but it also demonstrates at least some minor cracks in the authoritative stance it usually takes. The backlash was severe enough to cause the government to backpedal and pretend that Shixin did this all on his own, but it was probably the financial component of that backlash that was the prime mover for all of that.
So Shixin is out of a job and we’re left waiting to see if Beijing wants to try a more pared down version of its restrictive regulation on video gaming. Or the government could stop being so obsessed with how its people spend their entertainment time and money.
Somehow I expect we’ll never see the latter.
Filed Under: china, feng shixin, in-game purchases, video game regulations, video games
Companies: netease, tencent
Comments on “Chinese Official Fired After Backlash Over Latest Gaming Industry Regulatory Plans”
These are limitations I’m actually in favor for, so I’m actually a little surprised of the backlash.
There are studies that show how modern games, particularly F2P games, use psychology to manipulate people and keep them addicted.
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Its less of a modern system and more something thats been embeded in our DNA ever since the first person said “20 beads I can hit that rock”
And then the one who lost killed the winner.
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It’s more a feature of late-stage capitalism than with 2 million years of evolution.
I’m down with a scaleback of FOMO and abuse of psychology in games. But, the stock market has spoken, and it said “would you like to lose $80 billion dollars of VALUE with that?”
I’m still hoping some of the FOMO reduction stays, though…
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Yeah why is this being positioned as a bad thing in this article? In app purchases, login rewards, and “incentivizing longer playtimes” (read: using exploitative psychological tactics to encourage unhealthy gaming habits) are some of the specters plaguing modern gaming. They are all unequivocally putrid ass stink and I’m very glad the world seems to have finally woken up to how dogshit it all is in 2023.
If this causes Chinese corporations (Tencent included!) to suffer then that’s also a huge win in my book.
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There’s nothing inherently wrong with in-game purchases, daily rewards or playtime incentives. It’s how they’re implemented that’s usually dogshit.
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Disagree entirely. All these things suck.
The entirety of the gaming transaction should be, “Buy game; play game.”
Adding in layers to make more money just makes games suck.
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Cool.
In return, I want limits in advertising as well.
And spending limits for corporations. And SuperPACs and all forms of political funding.
After all, it’s psychological manipulation you seek to stop, and money is the best psychological manipulator of all…
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Again, that comes back the implementation. Most games fuck it up by double-dipping, that is, wanting to set both a AAA price point($70) AND have a fuckton of in-game purchases.
But you’re ignoring the F2P games, where in-game purchases, daily rewards and play-time incentives can be crucial to making a profit. Especially when the developers don’t use predatory practices to get people to buy shit.
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“using exploitative psychological tactics to encourage unhealthy .. habits”
This sounds like standard operating procedure. Many corporate offices probably employ people for the sole purpose of promoting such endeavors. Capitalism cares not about your unhealthy habits, it cares only that you are paying for them.
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If nothing else, the pursuit of these kinds of strategies just leads to less effort being put into actually making games… y’know… good.
It’s why we have a glut of absolute turds which are utterly artistically bankrupt but rake in money anyway from folks with addictive personalities.
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If this was the EU putting these measures and restrictions forward, then sure, it’d be fine. And if it had any sort of meaningful effect on actually curbing the user behavior, then people would definitely be all for it.
However, this is China we’re talking about. A country run by an administration who only reacts to something when it affects their personal embarrassment and not the welfare of their citizenry – and their reaction is, invariably, some form of culling.
The reality is that many policy changes enforced by the CCP are done for the spectacle. They made a big show about other social maladies, decreeing that they were clamping down on toxic work practices in tech companies and restricting after-school enrichment classes so youngsters wouldn’t feel the immense stress and cost from raising a child in the current landscape.
What happened? They ended up scuppering their own major industries – tech, manufacture, and extracurricular education – while the mental and monetary toll of actually raising a family hasn’t substantially reduced. It’s to the point where the President has all but said, “We’ve done our part, it’s the youngsters’ fault for not being willing to work at shitty jobs that they’re overqualified for, because they’re all obsessed with capitalism and can’t take hardship.” There’s also the recent sacking of plenty of high-ranking people in the military. It’s all for show.
The one thing that’s stopped heads from rolling across the ground is that China’s not at the North Korea stage yet.
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To be fair, the issues China faces aren’t that different from what other mature economies are facing. You’ve got a pool of highly educated graduates and not nearly enough job openings in fields and positions in desirable industries that they’d qualify for. When a generation of workers become disenfranchised, disillusioned and demotivated before they even step into the workforce, you get kids staying with their parents, endlessly doomscrolling on social media or sitting in their rooms playing mobile games.
China has gotten to the point where it’s like the US or Europe when it comes to opportunities for their youth. And if there’s one thing China absolutely loathes, it’s being like the US. They’re the ones with the superior nationalistic non-capitalistic ideology, after all. Why, they’ve even put out another round of compulsory patriotism curriculum for their grade schoolers.
I do agree that the clampdown on predatory game design practices is not going to change much. I had a friend working in a company for mobile game development, and for a time he was assigned to the helpdesk. The bulk of tickets he was getting were from Chinese whales asking why their payment for thousands of diamonds/emeralds/funbucks hadn’t gone through yet.
Just like the affluent parents who went underground to find illegal tutors to teach their only child English, the rich will find a way around these restrictions. The changes will mean little to the general populace, aside from a vague reassurance that their Great Leader cares about them. Kinda. Maybe. But until then, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, model citizen!
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See, this guy gets it. There’s absolutely no chance that enforcement will have any meaningful effect on anyone who’s willing to pay their way through anything.
This is the country that gave us the cry “Sue me if you dare, my father is Li Gang” after all.
A scapegoat thrown to the wolves? Inconceivable!
The most well known rule is never make the party look bad but only slightly less well known is this, never regulate a chinese company when profits are on the line!
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What is bullshit advertising?
Examples in comments
I have absolutely no problem admitting that all that crap is a big part of modern gaming, but “basically everything” is laying it on a bit thick. I can game all year long and never run into any of those, if I so choose.
The CCP’s crackdowns, starting with targeting Jack Ma, are one reason China won’t overtake the US as the technological leader. The CCP values power over growth and Chinese citizens will pay the price.
So much spam
Usually the spam filters are good at blocking spam comments, but how did this article receuve 6 spam comments, all from the same perspective, with links going to spam sites?
It's not a bad idea tbh
It was supposed to be a PR stunt find a problem affecting a very small niche of the population blow it out of proportion nd and deliver a solution. Showing how the government cared about the welfare of their citizens. You know propaganda 101.
But it backfired.
Whilst the new legislation is not really so bad. In that it helps reduce the predatory behaviour of game companies actively taking advantage of their customers by using any and all means possible to squeeze more money out of gamers. Is it heavy handed ofcouse it is, but then again that’s how it goes in China.
But the way the stockmarket reacted reminded the government that whilst they have the power to implement whatever legislation they want. Sometimes the consequences of doing so are definitely too high.
After all China’s economy is not doing so well at the moment,and the announcement of this proposed legislation caused a silly self inflicted wound that will affect the country for months if not years to come.
(1) The average Chinese citizen mistrusts the concept of investing in the stockmarket because of it’s crazy volatility and making billions of shareholder value in what could be considered blue chip companies evaporate in mere hours is not going improve the average citizens perception of the idea of investing in the stockmarket putting a major dent in the government efforts to encourage investment in places other than the property(housing) market
(2) Come the first quarter result announcements the companies that were affected by the drop in share price might decide to reduce operating costs in the most straightforward way by laying off workers in order to boost their profitability and thereby boost their share price.
But wait! China is currently in the middle of a high unemployment situation and that’s not going to be helpful.
(3) The GDP figures are definitely going to take a hit. Now arguably it won’t be a big hit maybe not even close to 0.5%. But when GDP is already forecast to shrink every little bit helps, so this is not good news.
(4) The governments reputation has been slightly damaged. In China as well as outside China. Look at how we’re all reading and laughing at the way they messed up.
Feng… taking one [in the back] for the team. Well, at least he’ll have more time on his hands, maybe play some video games.
And to think, just about a year ago, “Video Game Addiction Is Over, Says Chinese Video Game Addiction Regulator”.
Realistically, the war against whatever popular form of entertainment is in vogue at the moment is never going to end. Entertainment that the youngest generation enjoys is always going to be an easy target for pearl-clutching boomers to shit on. It’s their lowest hanging fruit. But you can always count on the Chinese administration to put out “everything’s fine, nothing to see here” takes that age about as well as old milk.