China shuts down: streaming ban pushed through from 10 p.m
Created: 05/13/2022, 10:45 am
By: Julian Kornacker
Next giant cut in the private life of the Chinese.
From 10 p.m. no more streams may be watched and donations from minors will be blocked.
Shanghai, China
- The Chinese Communist Party, CCP, has introduced the next major restriction: Chinese people under the age of 18 are not allowed to watch streams after 10 p.m.
In addition, the platforms should ensure that minors can no longer make donations to their favorite streamers.
This eliminates an important source of income for streamers.
And as if that weren't enough, in the future minors will only be allowed to stream with a state permit.
Measure (gaming and streaming) | Introduced on |
|---|---|
Minors are only allowed to play for 1.5 hours on weekdays | Nov 2019 |
Weekends and public holidays max. 3 hours | Nov 2019 |
No playing between 10pm and 8am | Nov 2019 |
Mandarin will be spoken in the stream | Aug 2021 |
Streamers must dress appropriately | Aug 2021 |
No vulgar content | Aug 2021 |
no more donations by minors | May 2022 |
Minors are no longer allowed to watch streams after 10 p.m | May 2022 |
Streaming only with state approval | May 2022 |
Streaming lock from 10 p.m.: Why is China doing this?
The Chinese government wants to make streaming service providers more responsible for enforcing the rules.
The new rules are enforced with the help of a child safety device, the so-called "youth mode", which is forced to switch off the stream automatically as soon as it is 10 p.m. local time.
The rules are enforced by the national radio and television administration in China.
Streaming ban from 10 p.m. in China - new bans on minors © Freepik (Montage)
All these rules serve only one purpose: China believes that gaming has consequences for society.
The ruling CCP party justifies its decisions by saying that more and more young people are becoming dependent.
For some time now, minors have only been allowed to play video games for three hours a week.
In addition, the state controls what is played and restricts the release of games that we in the West are free to play at any time.
The most recent example is Elden Ring.
In April 2022, China launched a two-month special campaign to curb the "chaos" in the live streaming and short video business (meaning TikTok, for example).
It is part of a far-reaching plan by the Chinese government to promote what the government deems appropriate and legal content.
Streaming ban in China: A huge regulated market - DouYu affected instead of Twitch
Since Corona, streaming has also experienced a boom in China.
Unlike us, there is no twitch in China.
The providers there are called Huya, DouYu and Bilibili, among others.
Incidentally, Huya is held by the well-known Tencent group and the tech giant is also a shareholder of DouYu.
One of the biggest streamers in China is Nai Nai, who is currently streaming from Shanghai.
DouYu is the largest streaming platform in China, with 163.6 million monthly users in 2019. That's about 20 million more than Twitch.
More than 140 million monthly users watch live streams here.
At the beginning of 2022, the game Elden Ring, by From Software, had a daily viewership of approximately 17.1 million, even though it is not officially licensed.
It remains to be seen how the new rules will affect the streaming market in China.
Experts assume that if the new rules are consistently enforced, it will have a very strong impact on companies.
