Oppo's New Age-Based System to Combat Smartphone Gaming Addiction: Report

Oppo has introduced a new system to help curb the smartphone gaming addiction rampant among youngsters. This comes as manufacturers, developers, and governments alike are in efforts to tackle smartphone gaming addiction. The new anti-gaming addiction system from Oppo asks users to verify themselves in order to restrict purchases according to a gamer's age. The system will be an added feature on Oppo smartphones, which will ask users to verify themselves with real life details before buying games or making other game-related purchases. According to a report citing official notes, the verification will be mandatory before a user can make purchases.

According to a report by Chinese publication MyDrivers, as noted by GizmoChina, the authentication for the Oppo anti-addiction system will require real life details of the user, before they can go ahead and buy games. The Oppo anti-gaming addiction system will introduce purchase limits according to a user's age. Here is how the segregation goes:

Users under the age of eight will not be able to spend more than 50 CNY (roughly $7) in a single transaction while purchases for a whole moth will be limited to CNY 200 (roughly $28) per month. Further, users between the ages of 16-18 years old will not be able to spend more than CNY 100 (roughly $14) per transaction and CNY 400 (roughly $57) per month.

Oppo's move comes in line with the Chinese government's already in place guidelines and policies that aim to tackle smartphone gaming addiction. Last year, the Chinese government had imposed a gaming curfew where gamers under 18 were banned from playing games between 10:00pm and 8:00am. Smartphone gamers were also restricted to a total of 90 minutes of gaming on weekdays and three hours on weekends and holidays. In 2018 also, China announced the establishment of a gaming regulator in order to limit the number of new online games, restrict paying time and develop an age-restriction system. This move, however, made it harder for new game titles to be launched in the country.

Famous game developer Tencent Games, the distributor for PUBG Mobile, had also recently announced that it will be running several game trials to promote its anti-gaming addiction policies. Tencent had also put a time restriction in line with the Chinese government's ruling last year. Before that, the developer had put a restriction on players below the age of 13 years in China. Tencent had also launched a Health Reminder feature for players in India last year, which limited the players to only several hours of gaming each day.