(Yicai Global) July 5 -- Tencent Holdings, the world’s largest mobile games company, plans to prevent underage gamers from playing at night by using a facial recognition system.

The system, called Cruising at 0.00 a.m., will screen users who play games for a long time at night, Shenzhen-based Tencent said on its WeChat account today. Players who refuse to accept verification will be regarded as minors and will be logged off as part of the company’s anti-addiction system. 

Some underage gamers have tried to dodge the anti-addiction system by using their parents’ identities, prompting Tencent to try out the facial recognition system for paid gaming sessions. The function has been trialed on more than 60 games so far and it will gradually cover more products in future, Tencent added. 

With the popular mobile phone game Arena of Valor, users aged below 18 will be barred from logging into their accounts from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day and they will be forcibly logged out after staying online for over two hours in a single day. 

Tencent’s revenue from online games jumped 29 percent to CNY39.1 billion (USD6 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2020 from a year earlier, accounting for about 30 percent of its business income in the period. Minors under the age of 18 contributed about 6 percent of the games revenue, and those under 16 provided 3.2 percent.  

Tencent has accelerated its investment in the gaming sector this year as competition has become increasingly fierce. It invested in 27 game companies in the first half of 2021, Securities Daily reported today, citing data from corporate information platform Tianyancha.  

Editor: Tom Litting