KING of Glory, a popular mobile game developed by Tencent, has many parents and teachers worried as the game operator hasn’t fully implemented real-name registration for its players while many students have indulged in playing the game, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported Wednesday.

An online article entitled “Do your kids play King of Glory” recently aroused concerns and discussions on the Internet. Many netizens have said their children are addicted to this game, and some children who do not play the game are scorned by their classmates.

According to statistics provided by the third-party mobile data platform, TalkingData, King of Glory has two of the largest user groups. The first group is office workers, who account for 68.7 percent of all of the game’s players, while the second group is students, who make up 24.5 percent of total players. Among the student players, 21.8 percent are college students and 2.7 percent are primary and secondary school students.

Although the number of primary and secondary school students is not a great portion of the players, many parents and teachers have expressed their concerns.

In April, King of Glory announced a real-name registration system, which requires all players to offer their real names and ID numbers. The game operator said that players who did not complete their real-name registrations before May 17 would be unable to log into the game. However, players could still play normally without registering their real names last week.

A vice principal with a junior high school in Nanshan District, who declined to be named, said that it is very common to see students playing King of Glory. “Some play it after their parents are asleep and some secretly use the money on their parents’ cellphones to buy game gear,” he said. According to the vice principal, students can easily get addicted to the game during holidays, and those with poor academic performance tend to be more addicted to it.

“Parents are not always able to stop their children from playing games. Also, because of the great popularity of the game, those who do not play will not be able to join the conversations of the many students who do,” said the vice principal. He concluded that it’s almost impossible for the school and parents to fully restrict students from playing the game if the students lack self-discipline.

Targeting the problem of game addiction in underage players, the game’s operator Tencent launched a “Growth Guardian Platform” in February to help parents supervise their underage children. Through this platform, parents are able to limit students’ login periods and consumption on the game.

An anti-addiction system for the game was launched by Tencent on May 22, which notifies users or suspends the game if it is played for too many hours at a time. However, Tencent said the real-name registration of players was still an ongoing process that could be further improved.

According to Tencent, to effectively solve the problem, joint efforts from the parents, schools, game operators and policy makers are needed.

(Zhang Yang, Su Tangwuyou)