China Imposing New Game Restrictions Soon

China's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) is gearing up to implement stricter gaming restrictions, shutting down games that do not meet the new regulations.

The GAPP will close down games that do not operate the fatigue system, which rewards players with less experience points in games depending on the amount of time they have been online. World of Warcraft already has the system in place.

The regulatory body will reportedly also not allow new games to be released in China unless they have the system in place.

[Maticus]

Crikey, why don't they just ban games altogether and be done with it!

[Leord]

Well, I wouldn't put it past them!

[Malfurion]

Yeah, Shhhh! Don't give them the idea!

But seriously, this is getting ridiculous. Can you imagine this happening in the western world?

[Leord]

I was so appalled by this system when I first heard it. Not so much for the effects but for the implications of people's right to freedom. Obviously it was just an eye-opener for how different things are in China...

[SCFreelancer]

I guess you could look at it like that. If that is how they want/like to live then thats fine with me.

However, my personal opinion is that no-one has (or at least should have) the right to restrict others on things that do not hurt others or the society in general.

[Proxy]

Think back to the days when the government formed the citizens - oh, wait, that's not how it works.

The citizen form the government. Lets never forget the government is there to server the citizens. Lets remember that a government with the power to give us everything has the power to take it away. Just look at China.

[AndyA]

Well, at least the government hasn't banned games entirely. The principle behind the fatigue system is sound, but at what point does it infringe on people's freedoms?

[iceice123]

It is China, their government doesn't care about its people's freedoms.

[Dorjan]

The fatigue system won't work. If they do want it to work like that then they can limit each account for x hours a day surely?

[Malfurion]

Well, would you continue playing if you got no experience? If you're cap level it doesn't matter though I suppose. They might limit gold earned too though.

[Fyzzu]

Those wacky communists. What will they do next?

I can kinda see this being implemented elsewhere. Not to this extent, certainly, but I suspect there's going to be more public outcry as MMOs get bigger and bigger about how long people are spending on them, and a few MMOs voluntarily including systems like this...

That said - is the WoW fatigue system something unique to China, or is this just the Rest system? As that does, technically, give less xp the longer you've been playing. Not heard about it before.

[Malfurion]

No, after reading that you can see it's a separate thing, looks like if you play for 5 hours you stop getting XP at all. Just... speechless.

[JonahNL]

This is definitely getting out of hand now. Reports of people wanting red stop buttons on games and such. When are they going to realize that games aren't the cause of every friggin' problem out there? Geez...

[Strife Lives]

Then they can be like in the Matrix where they hook everybody up and turn them into batteries that drive robots to do the work?

[syrinx]

Soon probably :)

[joydestroy]

wtf

[thetamer]

I need to level