China continues its eradication of the "unhealthy" aspects of gaming and has announced a plan to impose time limits on online games from October.Fans of games like World of Warcraft and Lineage II will have a mandatory cap on how long they can play; playing for longer than 3 hours will see a reduction in the character's abilities, while playing for 5 hours will see a severe reduction that doesn't return to normal for another 5 hours.
The new plan is just one in a series of moves the government has made to protect the citizens against the gaming "scourge".
Earlier this month, the government placed a ban for minors on any game that involved the killing of another player, and an official clinic was opened recently in Beijing for the treatment of Net addiction:
All of China's main games operators have agreed to the controls - unsurprisingly since they are state licensed - and just to show how willing they are to fall into line, Interfax-China news agency reported the operators as "prepared to sacrifice short-term revenues to create a healthy environment for online gamers", which is very noble of them.
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