A bid by the Chinese government to limit the hours teenagers spend playing games online may be doomed due to the combined resistance from game operators and players, according to industry observers.
The aim is to "purify the Internet, promote the civilised way of surfing online and protect the minors' physical and psychological health," the General Administration of Press and Publication said when issuing the rule in April.
From July 16, all games operating in China are required to install a programme that will cut the rate of credits an under-age player can collect by half if he has stayed in a game for more than three hours.
The player can earn no credit once the time exceeds five hours.
Seven major game operating companies were asked to launch research and work on the programme in August 2005 and installed it on 11 popular games on a trial basis from October 21, 2005.
However, devoted players apparently are not too bothered by the restrictive software, calling it anything from useless to pure folly. "For Fantasy Westward Journey, players can open more than one account and switch to another account if the indulgence programme finds you've played for five hours," Zhao Mengyuan, a 21-year-old student in Beijing, told AFP.
Fantasy Westward Journey is a popular game run by NetEase, a major Chinese language content and services provider. The game boasted 120 million registered users at the end of March.
According to various earlier reports, it has become a common practice among teenage players to either keep several accounts for one game or to use an adult's account to escape the penalty. "It is the players' right to open accounts," said NetEase in a statement when asked by AFP how the company deals with the tricks.
"The point of the indulgence prevention programme is to provide a guideline rather than to create a cure-all that solves all the problems."
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