SHENZHEN-BASED tech giant Tencent has rolled out a facial recognition “midnight patrol” function to root out children masquerading as adults to get around a government curfew on underage gamers, in the latest bid to curb video-game addiction in China.

China bans people under 18 from playing online games between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., part of a raft of rules introduced to weed out the excesses of gaming culture among the youth, from worsening eyesight to online addiction.

But many young players have navigated the restrictions by using gaming accounts registered by adults.

Online gaming giant Tencent last week moved to close those loopholes by implementing facial verification checks on anyone playing with an adult ID after the curfew.

The system, dubbed midnight patrol, is in place in more than 60 of Tencent’s games and includes popular titles like “Honor of Kings,” which boasts over 100 million daily users, and “Peacekeeper Elite.”

Tencent also said it would start requiring users to pass a facial recognition test when changing safety settings designed to let parents limit their children’s game usage, as “some children have stolen their parents’ phones” to modify the settings. “Kids, put your phones away and go to sleep,” the company said.

“Anyone who refuses or fails face verification will be treated as a minor, included in the anti-addiction supervision of Tencent’s game health system and kicked offline,” the company said. The new rules fall in line with regulations the government laid out in 2019 to curb video-game addiction. (SD-Agencies)