Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable. Nearly 97% of miners in China have access to the Internet and a significant portion of them use that access to play online games.
There's a lead to many controversies, especially over the issue of miners' gaming consumption.
Hello, I'm Limeing and this is Roundtable.
Today with New Holy and Brandon Yates, we review the efforts of gaming industry NGO and providing some kind of standards for spending and refunds in their association to underage gamers.
So this is a new organization, but there is an NGO non-governmental organization under the name of the Internet Society of China and it has published some new standards on the management requirements for online gaming service consumption for miners.
Well, that sounds quite a mouthful for something that's still tentative and still soliciting public opinions.
Yes, super important though, I think.
Yes, and actually this is not a new organization.
It has been there since 2001 and it is the Internet Society of China.
It plays a significant role in the development and management of Chinese Internet.
Key roles and functions include industry coordination and advocacy, hoping to realize the goal of helping the companies as well as parties within the Internet Society to grow healthier and also steadier, more sustainable, and also standards and regulations, including or regarding Internet Security, data protection, the ethical use of technology, which I think for today's topic and falls into this category.
There also working on education research, international cooperation, promoting Internet literacy to especially young people or the vulnerable groups, including the elderly.
So yes, they are doing a lot of things to help the Internet Society of China to grow and to develop.
Most recently they have come up with a set of standards governing refunds when parents or children seeks to claim refunds based on what they've spent in games, mostly mobile games and online games.
Yes, this actually is issued in 2024, which is this year, the 28th of May, the Internet Society of China published the standards on the management requirements for online gaming service consumption for miners for soliciting public opinions.
Like Nami said, and this is what we're doing.
We're public opinions talking about these issues.
I think this kind of legislation and education is very important for the Internet companies themselves, but more important, I think, like we've mentioned, to protect, for example, the elderly miners, because I think that there are a lot of people operating the Internet and mobile gaming and that sort of thing with a lack of education and with a lack of protection, particularly those two demographics.
And I think that the fact that steps of being taken to protect those demographics, I think that's incredibly important because they are vulnerable to things like we've said, the loss of data, overspending, and that sort of thing.
So I think it's very important to protect those groups.
Definitely because there are definitely a lot of other articles in this management requirements, but the reason we're talking about getting the refund for the kind of money that miners spend without the permission of their parents' regard is because as of June 2023, the number of Internet users in China has reached 1.08 billion, with over 200 million users aged 19 and below.
Accounting for nearly 20% of the total, and between 2022 and October 2023, public attention towards minor gaming duration decreased by 70%.
Thanks to the kind of regulation that's published in 2000 and 2021, suggesting that miners should not spend too much online gaming time.
So actually the miners' gaming duration situation has been decreased while attention to refunds for miners' game expenses increased.
So this has been in the spotlight for a while and that is why standards, regulations, requirements are asked to be in place for quite a while and then there it is.
And we're talking about how efficient these kind of regulations can be.
And I think those are two areas that are particularly important for miners is the refund situation, although that being said, I hope that the kids that were knowingly spending large amounts of money are being punished by the parents, either by being grounded or being banned from playing computer games because they also need to take, even though they are miners, they do need to take responsibility when they know they're breaking rules.
But you know the parenting tips can come in the second part of the show as well.
Yes, yes, yes, we'll get there.
And then again, the monitoring of the amount of time that children spend on the internet and gaming and also what they are actually accessing and monitoring that, I think that's also very important.
Some more background information before we dive deeper into the conversation and that is NewHoling already has listed the number of people that get involved that have access to the internet and what exactly do they do?
It seems there's a demographic divide for girls under the age of 19 most of them spend their time watching online videos, listen to music and doing homework, looking for, you know, doing research.
I'd say that's the same as the Africa too to be honest.
Yeah, well in comparison for boys, most of them use it to watch online videos, play games, 42% of them, and then they'll listen to music as well.
So there's a huge percentage of people who spend time playing video games and so much so that this is a rather very important issue that authorities have been looking into.
And in fact, over the past few years, the authorities have introduced some limiting measures to try and reduce the amount of time students spend on gaming alone.
There's talk about a cap on also the time that they're supposed to spend on gaming, it seems that only on Friday, Saturday and Sundays they're supposed to have one hour on each day dedicated to gaming.
Yes, actually, if to put it simply, every kid every week would have three hour online gaming time.
That's basically the strategy.
But even with that, I mean, some more background info and that is the amount of spending that young kids are willing to add up to is quite stunning.
In some cases, we're talking about, well, not necessarily kids, but people in general could be a lot of...
In fact, most of them are adults.
Some of them individual players that can spend up to one million in R&B, which is more than 16,000 euros...
Well, 160,000 euros on us.
You know, we could also be interesting as time progresses and the dialogue continues about this particular issue.
I would love to hear from the esports industry and people in that sphere, because while I agree that I think limiting the amount of time that kids are able to spend online and playing games, you might find that they are perspective miners that might go on to have careers in esports and can actually earn a really good living.
You know, participating in that industry, if they are only able to spend three hours a week playing games, that might limit their chances of becoming professional esports players.
And while that is a very small amount of gamers that can go on to be professional gamers, that might need to be something to be considered, because obviously as a sports journalist, in the last year, I've noticed that the esports boom, not just in China, but globally has been incredible.
I think we've seen such a rapid growth in a singular sport for very, very long time.
So I think that managing miners' time online and also considering prospective professional gamers and managing their potential careers, that could be an interesting dynamic to look out for in the future.
It actually is a very interesting situation, but the thing is, if you're a miner and you're playing for hours a week, you're not breaking the law, you're only breaking some rules.
And that's why some parents actually know that their kids are playing.
They would allow their kids to use their ID cards or ID information.
But there are different ways to get around as long as the guardians give it a green light, or special situations, like you said, for potential esports gamers or athletes, definitely there are ways to get around it.
So that's why companies, especially gaming companies and authorities, are facing very complicated situations.
On the one hand, it's the rule that children are supposed to play more than three hours a week, that kind of thing.
All of our societies concern is that when children are little or when they are in school age, they're supposed to dedicate all their time into studying.
That sort of has been their social consensus.
Yeah, well, spending time outdoors and socializing with people face to face, all of that traditional sort of activities that kids used to enjoy.
Yeah, it is now. I mean, with the way that times have progressed, it is going to, I think in a couple of years, it's going to be called old school at some point, unfortunately.
But I think that managing all of that is incredibly important.
And beyond esports, you've got potential future programmers, analysts, and there's so many, an AI, and there's just so many potential careers that will require people sitting in front of a computer screen for hours a day.
So there's so many different elements that people need to consider with these rules in mind.
On the other hand, even as this whole of society expects miners to focus their time and their energy on study, there are considerations, real life considerations, on the part of parents that thought, well, just some game.
Well, letting my kids use my account to play games would help them leave me alone for a bit.
If it really helps them build a career in gaming in esports, then why not use my own account?
Maybe the internet monitoring should be more specific.
So for example, someone that wants to become a future analyst, you can say, well, you spend three hours a week playing games.
But then the rest of the time you spend on a computer needs to be dedicated to your studies for a potential career in the internet or online.
Maybe a license or examination that proves that this kid has really talented in gaming in esports and they're going to be given some slack when it comes to the game.
But beyond that, let's say there's somebody that wants to pursue a career that involves computers or online or the internet or whatever, they might still enjoy gaming in the spare time.
So maybe that can be managed.
So three hours gaming, eight hours programming or whatever.
I said, yeah, yeah, this is why it's complicated situation.
And this is why the gaming industries in particular are facing challenges.
On the one hand, they have the rule telling them they have to follow the rules about the time, about the amount of money that young children are supposed to best spend using their games.
On the other hand, there are no parents who are not following the rules.
There are parents who pretend to be kids and making claims for refunds because, well, already there's a there's a rule saying kids are not supposed to spend more than 400 a month.
That kind of thing. Parents and even shady businesses are leveraging these rules to try and get their money back.
Yeah, posing as kids. For sure.
So I think the reason we're trying to make rules and regulations, making sure that the refund process can be done accordingly is because these situations are complicated.
And there are cases of kids using the bank account of their parents remembering the password and putting in too much money in just one game and overnight and doing it multiple times.
If I ever had a kid and they I caught them doing that, they would be in serious trouble.
They would never touch a computer game again.
And the situation is parenting discussion.
Yeah. In previous years, if kids can only play games on, for example, computers or some kind of internet libraries or bars of such.
10 years ago, it's actually easier to identify that it's the kids who embezzle the money of the family and actually.
And I thought I would hear the terms kids and then bezel in the same bed.
Together, right? I think it's a, well, it's not so fun if it happens in our family.
Exactly. Yeah. And previously, it's relatively easier to identify this kind of situation, which is why previously for most gaming companies, they would just directly give the money back.
Refund right on the spot, but with the development of technology with more and more games transferring from computers to mobile devices and with kids being clever, more and more remembering.
And not to be remembering the password and actually some adults, liberately giving their information, their bank card and also password information to their kids.
And for what's this as well, you know, adults and companies posing as kids, that's another problem to deal with.
So like, Lyme has iterated that to the situation is getting more and more complicated.
So we need something to, you know, for the judges to know who is actually responsible for this 10,000 yuan of charge in a game and who should be bearing how much percentage of it and whether or not the gaming company should give the money back to the family.
These situations and also details are relatively a bit muddy, but with these kind of articles in place, I think the situation can be a little bit better.
And I think that's important to bear in mind is that having the set of guidelines, like you said, for example, for individual cases and for judges and, you know, people that make decisions based on who needs to pay out money and who gets refunds, etc.
Having that set of guidelines is important to kind of have a base to rely on, but then be open to interpretation for individual cases, because like we've said, there are so many complications and so many nuances that each case needs to be considered on an individual level.
Because they are so many different elements to bear in mind.
So many, yes. But with that in mind, it's good to have the set of standard regulations to rely on before you make these nuanced and individual decisions.
Honestly, the gaming industries, a lot of the companies don't know what to do.
Like NewHoling said earlier, the standard procedure used to be the case where the companies will refund outright whatever application that whoever is has made.
But now that with the more elements at play here with people pretending to be young kids and claiming refunds, and the companies really needed some guidance and even some some boundaries.
So they know what to do on the different circumstances.
And also the parents are also the victim here.
Some parents have their money stolen and being blamed as the kind of bad parents who would neglect their kids that are actually using their account and they're trying to get their money back.
It's not neglecting kids.
It's the naughty kids. They need to be punished.
Yes. What I'm saying here is that actually these honest parents can fall in as the victim of naughty kids' situations as well.
Because previously they will get their money back right there.
But now they need to prove that it's their kids who actually use their money instead of themselves pretending to be kids and trying to get the money they've already spent back.
The tables have turned.
Yes. So I think with a relatively clear and more detailed regulations in place, as long as you're playing by the book, you're falling the rules, you would not fall into victim of the naughty situation at and more.
Well, that seems to be the goal of this new document that the Internet Society of China is trying to pass.
So how is that? So there must be some case studies to help us understand the new regulation.
For instance, what kind of scenarios that companies are off the hook?
And then what kind of scenarios where companies are supposed to refund 100%.
Oh, definitely. Actually, the standard sets requirements for consumption from minors before the payment process, online game service providers should set clear fee prompts, making sure that the kids and the players knows what's happening.
That's before the payment is in place, what's going to happen?
And one, there is actually a case that judge needs to be provided with proof of who's actually using the money.
For example, actually, we know that there is this one case suggesting that a kid, let's make it this way.
Actually, one kid has put in place around 17,000 yuan into one game.
And the parent talked to the gaming company and the gaming company said, it's because you gave your bank account information to your kid, allowing your kid to invest that money into the...
Oh, the company said that to the parent.
To the parent. And the parent agreed to that situation and the parent only got part of the money back because he was being a little bit neglected in this specific case.
And after two weeks, the kid actually used around 17 or 12,000 yuan again into that same game.
So the kids had the kid had access to his parents account details again.
I would have gone on a shopping spree like you could not imagine I'd go online and start buying Louis Vuitton bags and overseas trips.
I would have had a ball. And you would know that...
And then the parents sued the gaming company saying that you should give all the money back.
But the judge believed that because the parents are actually responsible for this situation.
Because it happened already and now it's happening again.
And these are the intricacies in such cases.
Show casing why we should make clear which party is responsible and bearing how much percentage of the responsibility.
And that case is definitely the parents fault.
Exactly. For the first time, the parents could say that I wasn't aware of my kids, you know, appropriating money from my bank accounts and really spending, you know, a large sum of that on gaming.
Then the second time over, you're supposed to have gotten the message that you have a naughty kid that is quite interesting getting your password and really spending a large amount of money on gaming.
That's crazy. So that is a very, very specific case.
So it's a good example to show that this new document is seeking to clarify the responsibilities of all parties involved.
Just reminding parents not to share your account details with your kids because you never know if you've got a little naughty kid or not.
Sure. That settling is challenging in that case.
I mean, given the operating system that we are using could be Apple could be Android could be so many tailor made version based on Android, for instance, me, you are here in China.
Then I don't believe any operating system has made it has perfected their payment system to allow for the scenarios where a kid is using the smart device.
Certain applications like online streaming video streaming platforms like Billy, Billy, they have an option for parents to choose the TNH mode that that is possible.
But as for the payment method so far, I don't see any operating system accommodating that specific need.
Creating a physical or a virtual device between a DOS account and then a TNH account.
So then I guess that response.
Yeah, but then that responsibility would fall on the parents to make sure that their kids don't access the account information.
In absence of a mechanism that's embedded in the operating system.
Yeah, this is partly the parent parents responsibility.
For now, but then the company should also take on responsibilities to try and protect some of these parents from falling victim to their kids spending large amounts of money.
The interesting thing here is that for miners who are playing games, they are already facing limited time duration.
They are facing limited money that you can actually spend in a game.
It's like 400 yuan. So it's not a huge amount.
The situation or the tricky technique that these companies are trying to solve or the situation they're trying to find a way to navigate is to identify whether or not the person who's playing games are acting.
Playing games are actually minor or the parents because sometimes actually over 30% of parents actually, well at least that's the status in 2033.
That is the parents over 35% of parents actually know that their kids are using their account to play games because they have already finished their quota of the week.
So at this point until the companies change their systems that can somehow monitor whether a child or an adult is playing games, the responsibility in terms of monitoring a child spending habits on online gaming falls directly onto the parents.
Well, actually, I think the companies are doing a little bit more than that already because they would identify it and also analyze the time that the player is actually using to play games to try to figure out where's the help of big data artificial intelligence.
To figure out whether or not it's a kid or a parent because if you're playing during daytime and mostly if you're playing during daytime, probably you're in a doubt you do not have to go to school.
And if you're playing in the middle of the night, two or three, definitely, well, maybe it's a parent.
Well, it's very. The algorithm is a bit more complicated than what I'm describing.
But yes, the companies are making something they making efforts, but it is it is like I think there's still progress to be made, but that being said, I think it is a very difficult thing for companies to monitor to be able to determine who is actually playing at a certain time.
But they do have the responsibility and they are doing something.
And they're also supposed to operate on a real name on system.
And if someone is allowed to subscribe and register an account and play the games without identifying who they are, you don't know whether they're an adult or a kid, then the company is definitely at fault.
We might need to get to a point where facial recognition or you know fingerprint ID or something like that might be required to give a user access to a certain game where money's involved.
Yeah, actually that is in place.
The only problem is some parents would help their kid get around the facial recognition.
No, well, then the kids then the parents are called for that.
I don't feel sorry for the parents.
If that happens and then the kid spends like 30,000 yuan on a parent's account, then I don't feel sorry for that parent.
That's completely on the parent, not the company.
There you go. There's a lot of very, very complicated issues that this new document developed by the Internet Society of China seeks to address.
And then the gaming really is a very complicated industry.
And it's also a profitable industry.
I mean, given the culture that has taken hold over the past few decades, remember we were one's kids and we used to play games.
And as such, we have a we're experienced a much stronger culture.
We built a much stronger culture for gaming as we once had to encounter when we were little kids.
I mean, parents were certainly more prohibitive than we are without kids.
But also, I don't ever remember a situation as a kid when I was gaming where there was potential for money to be spent.
So I think there's a lot more complications that companies, parents and kids need to be aware of as gaming advances.
Yeah, yeah, also developing gaming suddenly is a good way to help advance technology.
Many of the technologies used in gaming can also be used in real life situations like in remote medication and diagnosis, that kind of thing.
So it's a valuable business.
