On 22 December 2023 the National Press and Publication Administration published a notice seeking public comment on the draft Online Game Administration Measures. The comment period runs until 22 January 2024. The draft addresses publishing and operation, content management, protection of minors, user rights and virtual items.
The gaming sector moved sharply on the day of publication. The market reaction indicates that the draft reaches beyond content review into the revenue model and operating logic of online games.
Publishing and licences
The draft continues the framework of publishing licences and publication numbers for online games, and adds requirements for commercial launch, technical testing, changes and termination of service.
Developers and publishers need to distinguish three stages: research and development, testing and commercial operation. Technical testing must not charge fees or enable top-ups, a long-standing regulatory requirement. The draft further brings test scale, frequency and filing within the framework.
Protection of minors
Protection of minors remains a priority. The draft requires real-name registration, time and duration limits, spending limits and age-appropriate prompts, together with guardian enquiry and refund mechanisms.
The difficulty is not writing an anti-addiction rule but demonstrating that it operates: the source of real-name data, identification of minors, interception of payments, refund handling and customer service records must all be verifiable.
Spending caps and incentive rewards
The draft provides that online games may not offer incentive rewards such as daily login, first top-up or consecutive top-up rewards. All online games must set user spending caps and publish them in the service rules.
These two requirements directly affect promotional design. Check-in rewards, first-purchase packages and consecutive top-up rebates are common acquisition and retention tools; under the draft they would need to be rebuilt. Spending caps also require differentiation by age and spending capacity.
Virtual items and trading order
The draft restricts trading, speculation and auction of virtual items, and prohibits providing or tolerating high-price trading of virtual items through speculation or auction.
The in-game item economy interacts with external trading platforms. Companies must address item pricing and drop rules, platform cooperation, the boundary of player-to-player trading, and compensation arising from service termination or version changes. The legal nature of virtual items, user agreements and consumer rights sit at the centre of this section.
Termination and user rights
The draft imposes advance notice and user-rights requirements for termination. Shutting down a game is not completed by an announcement: unused virtual currency, unexpired services, user data and refunds must be addressed.
Companies should design a termination plan in advance: notice period, compensation standard, refund channel, data deletion and retention, and the division of work with distribution channels.
Five preparations
First, review existing charging activities and identify incentive reward and spending cap risks. Second, verify the compliance status of publication numbers, testing and commercial operation. Third, check the actual operation and records of the anti-addiction system. Fourth, review contracts with virtual item trading platforms. Fifth, prepare a termination and user-rights plan.
For publishing and licence-related market access, see business licensing; for user agreements and channel contracts, see commercial contracts; for user data and minors’ information, see data compliance.
This note is based on the public consultation notice on the draft Online Game Administration Measures published by the National Press and Publication Administration on 22 December 2023. It is for reference only and does not constitute legal advice.