(Asian Tech Press) Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (700:Hong Kong, TCEHY: OTC US) was sued by a social welfare organization for allegedly violating minors' rights with its popular mobile game Honor of Kings on Children's Day.
On June 1, the Beijing Children's Legal Aid & Research Center (BCLARC) filed public interest litigation (PIL) for the protection of minors with the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court, arguing that the mobile game Honor of Kings developed by Tencent infringes on the rights and interests of minors.
It is the first case of public interest litigation for the protection of minors filed by a social welfare organization in China.
The Center believes that the game Honor of Kings has the following serious violations of the legitimate rights and interests of minors.
1. Tencent continuously lowered the standards of age-appropriate design, and the current game rating does not meet the standards for games rated 12+.
"Honor of Kings was once rated 18+, then lowered to 16+ and again to 12+ in 2021. However, the game currently has a lot of content and settings that do not meet the standards of "12+" in terms of character image, prize draw rules, voice communication, chat channels, etc.
2. The game characters dress too revealing, and there is a lot of pornographic and vulgar content on the game website and community that is not suitable for minors.
For example, most of the female game characters in Honor of Kings are dressed in low-cut clothes, ultra-short shorts, etc., which excessively expose their breasts and buttocks.
The official website of the game is also filled with a lot of pornographic, violent, and vulgar content and comments.
3. The game characters falsify the image of historical figures and trample on the traditional culture of the nation.
As a mobile game with a historical theme, Honor of Kings has a lot of content that maliciously falsifies real historical figures, tramples on good traditional culture, and conveys wrong historical views to minors.
For example, Sun Bin, a military strategist, who lived during the Warring States period of Chinese history, has become a childish boy. And Liu Bei, the founding emperor of Shu Han in the Three Kingdoms period, has become a godfather of the New York Mafia.
4. The payment limit and prize draw method violate China's relevant regulations.
A notice on preventing minors from becoming addicted to online games, issued by China's National Press and Publication Administration in 2019, clearly stipulates that online game enterprises should limit the monthly consumption of minors in the game services they provide following the law.
But Tencent did not strictly follow the notice to limit the top-up consumption of minors.
Tencent has also violated the law in the prize draw setting of Honor of Kings, intending to induce minors to become addicted and infringe the property rights of unspecified minors and their guardians and close relatives.
5. The setting of potentially inducing game addiction weakens the self-control of minors and increases the risk for addiction.
Honor of Kings is suspected of inducing minors to become addicted in terms of push advertising and sign-in settings, especially the default setting of accessing QQ or WeChat friends, which increases the social pressure of underage users.
In addition, there are many loopholes in its anti-addiction system, and Tencent's Parental Guardian Platform is not effectively promoted and used.
Since the launch of Honor of Kings, the number of registered users has grown rapidly, including a large number of minors. According to related reports, as early as 2017, the game's number of users under the age of 19 has exceeded 50 million.
At the same time, 167 Chinese parents jointly wrote a letter to the state authorities complaining deeply about the dangers of online game addiction due to their children's indulgence in games such as Honor of Kings.
The lawsuit was filed at a time when the newly amended Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Minors is coming into force on June 1, 2021.
The amended Law increases the number of articles from 72 to 132, adding and improving many provisions. In the face of the risks of internet dependency and addiction, it has taken a decisive step forward in the development of online protection for minors by establishing a separate chapter on online protection.
To address the "hardest hit area" of online game addiction, the Law imposes requirements on providers of online products and services, asking them not to expose minors to inappropriate games or game functions.
