China Youth Network Beijing, August 22 (Reporter Zeng Fanhua) Jinjie, a parent of a 10-year-old child, told reporters in an interview that the NetEase game "Egg Boy Party" is really contradictory: its cartoon atmosphere is cute and lovely, but many underage users know what "fraud" and "trap" are; The game operation is simple, but the online social network behind it is chaotic, with children "begging" and minors "begging"; It is especially easy for minors to "recharge by mistake", but when parents contact the operator to apply for a refund, they are in a difficult situation of proof.
Jinjie told reporters: his child played "Egg Party" this year and mistakenly recharged nearly 4,000 yuan, the child can bypass the anti-addiction system, use the parent's mobile phone account to log in to the game with one click, and the game does not do any verification on whether the player is a minor.
This is not an isolated case, more than 200 parents in a rights protection group to which Jinjie belongs have encountered the problem of "difficulty in refunding". It's not just refunds that make parents struggle – as they learn more about Egg Party, many parents are worried: Will the game have other adverse effects on their children?
Parents question: "The "Egg Party" juvenile protection system is not useful"
In recent years, the number of underage game users has been increasing, and the relevant departments have issued a series of management policies around the protection of minors, so that the game industry "has rules to follow": In 2019, the State Press and Publication Administration issued the Notice on Preventing Minors from Indulging in Online Games, which put forward clear restrictions on real-name registration of online games, the length of time for minors' online games, and the upper limit of recharge amounts; Then, in 2021, the Notice on Further Strictly Managing and Effectively Preventing Minors from Indulging in Online Games was issued, further requiring online game enterprises to strictly limit the time spent providing online game services to minors, strictly implement the real-name registration and login requirements for online game user accounts, and must not provide game services in any form to users who have not registered and logged in with their real names.
According to the "2022 Progress Report on the Protection of Minors in China's Game Industry" jointly released by the Game Working Committee of the China Phonological Association, the China Game Industry Research Institute and Gamma Data, in the year after the implementation of the new anti-addiction regulations for games in 2021, the total game time and consumption turnover of minors have been greatly reduced. However, the implementation and implementation of some manufacturers' regulations on the prevention of addiction of minors is still questioned by many parents. During the reporter's interview, many parents expressed strong doubts about the effectiveness of the "Egg Party" on the protection measures for minors and the anti-addiction system.
A search on Douyin for "egg boy party underage restrictions" found a comment posted on August 3 saying "good news, channel servers are not anti-addiction", which received 72,000 likes - channel servers refer to versions operated and promoted by some mobile phone manufacturers or platforms in cooperation with game manufacturers, and users can directly log in to the game using the accounts of relevant channels.
Screenshot from TikTok
In addition, any player can complete the "real name" authentication and log in to the game normally by clicking on the "Quick Game" option of "Egg Party" and filling in any adult ID information.
The reporter downloaded and compared several mobile games and found that Perfect World's "Fantasy New Immortal" and Gigabit/Thunder Games' "Ask the Road" did not have a "fast game" option; Tencent's "Honor of Kings" has a "guest login" option, but after clicking it, the pop-up window displays "no longer supports guest mode login"; Mihayou's Genshin also has a "Quick Game" option on the IOS side, and when clicked, it displays "Fast Game is full". In contrast, Egg Party's "Quick Play" feature further makes it easier for minors to bypass the anti-addiction system.
The "Quick Play" button is set on the login screen of Egg Party
On August 19, "Egg Party" responded to China Youth Network: In response to minors bypassing anti-addiction behavior by pretending to be adults, "Egg Party" has intelligently upgraded the juvenile protection system with the help of cutting-edge AI large model technology, and the industry has launched AI patrolmen for the first time to improve the accuracy of juvenile risk behavior identification, through multi-faceted big data analysis of minors' game behavior, AI patrol technology can accurately judge suspected underage players from the player's behavioral characteristics in the game. Timely interception control, supplemented by face recognition for efficient verification.
However, the reporter searched for "egg boy party" on the black cat complaint platform and found that there were more than 2,000 complaints related to this game in June and July this year, of which 1,063 results were generated by the keyword "minor"; A search with the keyword "child" yielded 736 results; A search with the keyword "child" yielded 342 results; A search with the keyword "refund" yielded 2467 results. It can be seen that the vast majority of complaints of the "egg boy party" on the black cat complaint platform are caused by minors' recharge and refund disputes. As of press time, searching for "egg boy party" on the platform, you can see that a large number of complaints about "mischarge" of minors were added in mid-to-early August.
Jinjie's parent rights protection group is full of parents who have encountered the problem of "mischarging" and "inducing consumption" in "Egg Party", and their children are as old as five and as old as thirteen; The amount of "mischarge" ranges from more than 1,000 yuan to more than 30,000 yuan.
Lu Xian's 6-year-old child recharged more than 10,000 yuan in "Egg Party" through two operator channels. She told China Youth Network that she first contacted one of the operators, and the first time she uploaded the refund application information, the platform rejected it on the grounds that it could not be determined that it was a minor recharge - this is not the dilemma of Lu Xian's family, because no child will take the initiative to use a surveillance camera to record the whole process of recharging the game.
Jinjie said that although parents have guardianship responsibilities, it is clear that the real name and anti-addiction measures of "Egg Boy Party" are very unsatisfactory.
"Egg Party" told China Youth Network: At present, the landing interface of "Egg Party" has set up an entrance to the "NetEase Parent Care Platform", which is convenient for parents to click directly. Recently, "Egg Party" also pulled up the juvenile parent mode pop-up window for suspected parent accounts in the game.
"Up to now, 88.07 million pop-up windows have been pulled up, 8.55 million parents have used the home-enterprise assistant function, and the utilization rate of NetEase parental coordination function has increased by 480%." "Egg Party" said that as an important part of the "last mile" of the protection of minors, "the role of family guardianship and education cannot be ignored".
"Game manufacturers cannot say that 'the anti-addiction system has been accessed' and the account has been verified with real names' to be exempt from liability, and they cannot be indifferent in the face of a large number of cases of minors 'mischarging'." Jinjie said, "Marking a line of small print in the corner and signing it by default in the user terms shows that you are legally compliant? You can get rid of the responsibility, you can throw the responsibility to the parents? ”
For the anti-addiction system for minors in "Egg Party", Chu Wan, the mother of the 10-year-old child, believes that it is "useless".
"It simply can't determine whether the person who plays the game on the mobile phone and recharges is a child or not — the system is basically ineffective." The bill provided by Chu Wan to China Youth Network included three consecutive recharges of 648 yuan within 6 minutes. "Egg Party" does not set up any verification and alarm mechanism for players to make multiple large recharges in a short period of time.
Screenshot of the "Egg Party" intensive recharge deduction bill provided by Lu Xian
Many parents expressed their dismay for only partial refunds. "If the child is older, I recognize it, but the child is too small. The game can be continuously recharged within a minute, and the system has no warning, I think "Egg Party" is the wrong party. Lu Xian rejected an offer from an operator to refund about 6,000 yuan in recharge. She insisted that her child was too young and a "person without civil capacity" and demanded that it be recovered.
Article 19 of the Civil Code stipulates that "minors over the age of 8 are persons with limited capacity for civil conduct, and the commission of civil legal acts shall be represented by their legal representatives or with the consent and recognition of their legal representatives", and Article 20 stipulates that "minors under the age of 8 are persons without capacity for civil conduct, and their legal representatives shall act on their behalf".
For example, Hu Zhengtian, a senior partner at Hubei Jiangheng Law Firm, said: "Parents have the right to request a refund for minors who recharge games without parental consent. He said that according to the "high generality" rule of civil evidence, it is impossible to make particularly high demands on minors, as long as the child can roughly say the time, process, amount and number of recharge, this evidence can be used.
Some lawyers pointed out that the premise for parents not to recognize and advocate the success of returning all game recharge funds is that minors recharge through game accounts registered with their own identity information and reach network service contracts with game companies.
Social concerns: minors "begging", "asking for adoption" and online fraud
Jinjie is not obsessed with a full refund, he is more concerned about why "Egg Party" does not strictly enforce the relevant regulations since the competent authorities have clearly required game manufacturers to limit the game time and recharge amount of minors. He hopes "not to let more minors repeat the mistakes of the past".
In his opinion, in addition to the problem of "difficulty in refunding", "Egg Party" also exposes many problems, such as undefended online social networking of minors, online begging, comparison, and online fraud for minors.
Chu Wan told China Youth Network that there are many phenomena of asking for skin in the game. She also recorded the chat history of one of the child's "egg friends" asking for skins. The "egg friend" said "I hope you can send it" and "You can send it if you want, it doesn't matter if you don't send it", and then "But I still want you to send it" and "Tomorrow I will take the most important test in my life." I really, really want that."
"Egg friends" ask for "skin" screenshots
The social pull of "egg friends" does not stop there. In the "egg party area" of NetEase Game's official app "NetEase God", reporters can see many users posting friend posts to find "egg partners", and even "asking for adoption", many of which claim to be underage users self-reported such as "my daughter, 14 years old" and "find someone who can adopt me". "Egg Partner" refers to netizens who team up together to play "Egg Party"; "Adopt" here refers to a player with good skills or older people playing with a player with poor skill or younger age, a concept associated with the "baby egg" in the game - "baby egg" refers to the younger players in Egg Party.
Collet, who has been teaching for 11 years, has been a homeroom teacher in secondary school for 9 years. As a teacher, he expressed his concern to China Youth Network. Collet said that online users claiming to be minors "do not necessarily mean that they are really underage", of course, if there are users pretending to be underage friends, it is naturally a very disturbing problem - but just for minors to recruit friends unguarded in the game, it is enough to worry him - in his opinion, "Egg Party" has prematurely directed underage children to the "social circle" of the Internet.
"Adults and netizens are mixed, not to mention children who are not yet mature in mind?" He said he was also worried about the impact of the expression "adoption" on the child's independent and sound personality.
In addition, after players enter the "Egg Boy Party", the game center that comes with the mobile phone will invite players to join the "communication group", and many minors exchange how to recharge and buy expensive game skins in the group, and "the wind of comparison prevails".
At the same time, the reporter searched and found that since January 2023 alone, Zhejiang Anti-fraud Center, Zhangjiagang Public Security Bureau, Yangzhou Police, Yuhuan Public Security, Lufeng Police, Yuxi Police, 10th Division Beitun City Public Security, Ping An Dongwu, Songyang Police, Ping An Ruzhou, Huai'an Internet Police, Jinning Public Security, Zhongshan Micro Police Tong, Wuxing Public Security, Ping An Dapo, Yangxin Public Security, Ping An Moqi, Yancheng Dafeng Public Security Micro Police, Ping An Miyun, Mayang Police Dynamics, Ping An Middle Station, Ping An Zhumadian and other dozens of public security, The government affairs accounts of the political and legal system have also reported fraud cases involving minors related to "Egg Party" - many of which are high-value cases - in June 2023, the "Dongguan Municipal Public Security Bureau" public account announced an online fraud case, a 13-year-old minor player was lured into more than 360,000 yuan; Yangzhou Daily reported in May 2023 that a 15-year-old player in Guangling District, Yangzhou, was defrauded of 79,000 yuan. The underage players in the above cases were all lured by scammers to "add friends to get game skins for free" in "Egg Party", and fell into the scam trap step by step.
Parents' appeal: minors are not "hunted objects" of the game
Some parents in the rights group believe that their underage children have become the coveted targets of some game developers and operators.
Previously, some parents have complained to the media about "Egg Party": this game is very bad, it may be played for a few days, and it will be charged into seven or eight thousand.
Since January 2023, the popularity of "Egg Party" among underage users has been increasing. Staff from the relevant department of Hangzhou Binjiang District, where NetEase belongs, said that since the winter vacation in January this year, the number of users of "Egg Boy Party" has exploded and "swept the campus". A number of parents told reporters that their children and many classmates around them are playing the game.
Despite the constant skepticism from the parent community, the revenue figures of "Egg Party" are still soaring. According to NetEase's financial report, in the first quarter of 2023, the net revenue of games and related value-added services was RMB 20.1 billion, an increase of 7.6% year-on-year... Sequentially higher gross profit for games and related value-added services was primarily driven by higher revenue from online games, such as Egg Party, and the one-time recognition of royalties for certain agency games in operating costs in the previous quarter. Its year-on-year growth was mainly due to the increase in online game revenue, such as "Egg Party", which was launched in May 2022.
In stark contrast to NetEase's bright financial results, many parents are "gray faces" in order to recover their "hard-earned money".
Jinjie said that in the face of game operators, many parents do not have the ability to communicate reasonably. "Some are guided by customer service to say things they shouldn't say; Some parents do not protect evidence at the first time, but cancel their accounts, resulting in various information that cannot be recovered and obtained, and it is difficult to protect their rights; Some parents will only blindly insult..."
In order to share experience and remind misunderstandings, Jinjie once opened a live broadcast to answer parents' questions about refunds.
The repercussions caused by rights activists online are not necessarily positive – they are also questioned and ridiculed by some netizens.
The screenshot comes from the message comment of the netizens of station B
Jinjie, Lu Xian, and Chu Wan do not deny that they have certain regulatory responsibilities as parents, but they believe that the game manufacturers and operators responsible for the development and operation of "Egg Party" should at least be able to "effectively distinguish and screen underage game users" before using the "victim guilt theory". When underage users encounter "online solicitation" or even online fraud in the game, operators should honestly assume their due responsibilities and implement the detailed requirements of relevant departments on the protection of minors to avoid further harm to the rights and interests of minors.
(Jinjie, Lu Xian, Chu Wan, and Ke Lai are pseudonyms in the text)