"Anti-addiction" affects Tencent's revenue? Tencent: Game development is not about making money for minors

The Paper's reporter Fan Jialai

After the implementation of the new regulations on the prevention of addiction of minors, how enterprises implement them has become the focus of attention from the outside world.

On December 15, the "2021 China Game Industry Annual Conference Minors Guardian Sub-Forum and the Implementation of the New Anti-Addiction Regulations" sponsored by the China Audiovisual and Digital Publishing Association was held in Guangzhou, as an annual event in the game industry, including Tencent, NetEase, Perfect World, Mihayou, Lilith and other game manufacturers gathered together.

In September, Tencent had the news that "a 60-year-old man beat the king five times late at night", and its implementation progress after the implementation of the new regulations was particularly concerned. In an interview with the media, including The Paper, Zheng Lei, head of Tencent's juvenile protection system and general manager of the user platform department, responded to the impact of "anti-addiction" on Tencent's finances and flow: "The domestic flow of minors accounts for a small proportion of Tencent's overall flow, and restricting minors is not an economic loss for Tencent. ”

Zheng Lei, head of Tencent's juvenile protection system and general manager of the user platform department

According to data disclosed by Tencent in the third quarter, the proportion of domestic minors' game turnover fell to 1.1%, down from 4.8% in the same period last year.

In addition to Tencent, game companies such as NetEase, Lilith, Perfect World, and Migu Interactive Entertainment also disclosed the specific progress of the landing of new anti-addiction regulations at the scene.

The landing of the new regulations still faces challenges: fraudulent use of accounts, brushing faces, and renting black products

According to data provided by Tencent, as of November, an average of 6.86 million accounts triggered face recognition in the login process of Tencent Games every day, and more than 70% of accounts were included in anti-addiction supervision due to refusal or failure to verify. In September, Tencent's domestic share of minors' game time dropped to 0.7%.

It is worth noting that Tencent's third-quarter financial report showed that its net profit slipped for the first time in a decade. The outside world is widely speculated that it is the impact on Tencent's revenue situation after the landing of the new anti-addiction regulations. In response, Zheng Lei responded: "Game research and development, not specifically for minors, nor to earn money for minors, the new rules themselves are not losses, since it is not a loss, there is no question of where to find balance back, this is not established." ”

According to the data, on March 24 this year, Tencent released the fourth quarter of last year's financial report, disclosing the consumption data of underage games for the first time, of which the flow of minors under the age of 16 accounted for 3.2%. According to the financial report of the second quarter of this year, Tencent's underage users under the age of 12 accounted for 0.3%, and the proportion of underage users under the age of 16 decreased to 2.6%.

He mentioned that in the process of strictly implementing the anti-addiction laws and regulations for minors, there are still many challenges, which mainly include three levels: First, the phenomenon of minors using the accounts of the elderly to play games is still serious. "We often see children playing games with their grandparents, grandparents' mobile phones, or directly asking grandparents to help brush their faces and supervise them." To this end, we have made a lot of targeted measures, and also carefully analyzed the activity of the elderly aged 55, over 60 years old, and even older. How many are real elderly people, how many are children using, what is the difference between their use behavior, game behavior, and try to find out those children. Zheng Lei said.

In addition, many adults will take the initiative to help children "brush faces". Zheng Lei said that even if the game system can catch who is a minor through technology, if parents cooperate with their children to use face recognition, it is difficult for enterprises to make more restrictions, and the implementation of the new regulations is also a blow.

At the same time, game rental number, number theft, accompanying play, etc. have formed a complete black industrial chain, seriously undermining the game real-name system and the protection mechanism of minors, Zheng Lei introduced, in addition to strengthening the face strategy to reduce the utilization rate of the rental number, Tencent also provides clues through technology to assist the police to crack down. In October, he cooperated with the Nanjing Jianye police to smash a number of criminal gangs that illegally leased game accounts through illegal trading of personal information, involving more than one million yuan.

Game companies cooperate to promote "anti-addiction": it used to be a multiple choice question, and now it is a mandatory question

Zheng Lei said that on matters related to juvenile anti-addiction, Tencent has set up a core team of dozens of people. At the entire company level, there is also a larger joint project team for the protection of minors, including almost all game project groups, interactive entertainment, WeChat, QQ, etc., which has formed a relatively smooth consultation mechanism. For example, when the new rules were updated, the team completed all the work in 26 hours.

He mentioned that Tencent spends hundreds of millions of yuan a year on the implementation of relevant regulations on the protection of minors and the prevention of addiction. "There was no resistance in the cost of use."

In promoting the new anti-addiction regulations, will domestic game manufacturers carry out more cooperation? In this regard, Zheng Lei told the surging news reporter that the essence of cooperation is not technical difficulty, but conceptual difficulty.

"In the past, when we talked about cooperation, everyone might be more casual, but now whether it is internal or external cooperation, the general attitude has become more and more proactive, compared with the past in the concept has made great progress." What used to be a choice of choice or not is now a must-choose question. ”

He mentioned that Tencent has previously joined hands with Unity, one of the most widely used game engines in the industry, to jointly launch anti-addiction system development tools to help game developers apply anti-addiction systems simpler and faster in the game development stage. At the same time, Tencent has joined hands with a number of mobile phone manufacturers to explore the "software + hardware" model to form a joint force, and the current cooperation objects include OPPO, vivo, millet, etc., to further help minors health internet access by strengthening hardware-side real-name verification and other ways.

On the landing of the new regulations on anti-addiction, Wu Xinxin, vice president of netease game market, told the surging news reporter that in May this year, NetEase set up a department dedicated to serving minors, "NetEase Game Minors Protection Center", through the form of independent department operation, the importance and input cost of minor protection work have been raised to an unprecedented height.

He said that in response to the addictive behavior of minors, an artificial intelligence protection system based on deep learning has been built, which has covered hundreds of different types of games under NetEase to escort the majority of underage players' healthy games. Thanks to the accurate analysis of big data and the experience accumulated by NetEase in anti-addiction work, the system can judge the characteristics of players from multiple dimensions such as real name situation, login time, payment habits, etc., and timely intercept and verify and effectively control suspected minor players.

Hu Rui, vice president of Lilith Games, mentioned that after the issuance of the "Notice", Lilith Games took the initiative to remove all games and channels that did not fully implement the anti-addiction regulations according to the required time for the first time, and only after completing the modification and inspection was correct, they were gradually re-listed. At present, in addition to restricting the length of time tourists play, real-name authentication, minors are limited to playing for three hours per week, Lilith is also actively exploring the specific application of new technologies such as face recognition in the game, which is used to solve a small number of situations where minors may borrow other people's identities and accounts to play and recharge.

Responsible editor: Wang Jie Photo editor: Shi Jiahui