WSJ and Bloomberg report that The Economic Information Daily, owned by the government-controlled Xinhua News Agency, ran a story of a student who claimed to have played Tencent’s Honor of Kings (Arena of Valor) for eight hours a day. The article also called for stricter regulations on gaming in China. This then caused the Chinese conglomerate’s stock to drop by 11%.
For its part, Tencent says that it will have stricter limitations on minor’s playtime of its games. This involves only letting play for an hour a day on weekdays, and two on weekends and holidays. But overall, it’s hard to see the report of what seemed like a single account of students spending excessive amounts of time gaming as anything but overblown. Equally overblown is the reaction towards it, making it a repeat of the media coverage in 2018, when the WHO first declared gaming addiction as a problem. (Source: Bloomberg, WSJ via GameSpot)
