Pressures by Chinese state regulators have forced Riot Games parent company Tencent to request the developers to create a regional surveillance system in League of Legends, revealed in an LA Times report.
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Throughout 2018, game companies in China have been meeting government demands to implement a method of tracking and limiting the amount of hours younger players in the Chinese market put into their games.
Epic Games, who Tencent has a large stake in, have already made and rolled out a similar tracking system and ID verification method for their Chinese players in order to accomplish the same goal.
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The Chinese government has been trying to counteract the trend seen among younger people, known to the state as a “video game addiction,” by forcing them out of matches after a two-hour limit, unless they accrue a heavy in-game penalty or outright exclusion, per the report.
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Tencent has been under pressure to create the surveillance tool in League of Legends as the game has been growing increasingly popular in the region.
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“Our lead engineers, based in California, are aware of every feature that we create for ‘League of Legends,’” Riot Games told the LA times. “We develop market-specific features collaboratively, with representatives from our engineering teams around the world.”
In fact, the Times got a hold of internal documents from the League of Legends developers that apparently shows Tencent requesting an “AAS (anti-addiction system) upgrade” for the Chinese version of their popular MOBA.
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To avoid the potential of losing the entire Chinese player base, Riot Games created and shipped out the update for that region’s version of the game.
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The report describes images in the Riot Games documents which labels younger players in a manner that adheres to “future AAS regulation.” Moreover, the requests in the documents wanted a way to kick players from League of Legends at certain times while restricting “time-based in-game rewards.”
If players are nearing their two-hour play limit, concept images in the report showed “anti-addiction warning” messages that would appear in the game. One mock-up reminded players that they weren’t allowed to play between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m.
There is no indication as of yet if Riot Games or Tencent would want to implement a similar feature for League of Legends in any other region.
