A borderline creepy use of facial recognition technology in games or the next great innovation in parental controls?

Tencent Games is a Chinese conglomerate that owns the most popular games nowadays but those games could soon be playing us.

Tencent announced that they will deploy facial recognition in games to identify underage players gaming at night. It’s a move with profound implications for the security and privacy of young gamers.

During China’s 4-week winter school break this year, school kids were limited to playing just 14 hours over the period, according to a calendar released by Tencent.

Image via BusinessInsider

The announcement aligns with a Beijing crackdown on gaming from August 2021, where the Chinese state agency National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) announced that online game providers may only offer one-hour time slots — from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. — to minors on Fridays, weekends, and official holidays. How would they enforce the curfew? Using facial recognition, of course.

According to a recent report , the world’s largest video gaming business confirmed three licenses including one for Undawn , an action role-playing game developed by its in-house LightSpeed Studios, and one for Alchemy Stars , a tactical role-playing mobile game developed by its associate Tourdog Studio. Tencent also won licenses to publish five imported games, including Pokémon Unite by Nintendo and Valorant by Riot Games.

Starting off with an interesting hook about a game data seller, the report starts off with Nick Yee, who founded a survey company which sells his results to most of the gaming industry titans, Tencent included.

Here, you’ll see it in a term called “game telemetry” .

“An emerging trend that has potential for a wide-scale and long-term impact on education is the idea that games can provide insights into students’ cognitive states based

on their in-game behavior—from fine-grained, moment-to-moment play behavior to summary game behavior such as number of levels reached,” says a study about game telemetry.

In-game data collection is used for two reasons: to sell that data later on, opening up new revenue streams for game makers, and to make games ever more addictive.

That’s a warning issued not just by privacy experts but by game developers themselves.

Sure, at a surface level, these parental controls in Tencent Games can help ensure a kid doesn’s sneak during the night and spends hours in a video game.

If Tencent uses its products this way, it’s clear the same goes for their games.

In January of this year, Tencent came under fire from privacy experts after it was found to scrape web browser history through its popular QQ Messenger, searching for keywords and storing the data it gathered.

This report came after, in 2016, the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab revealed that the QQ Browser, another Tencent product, regularly sent personal information back to Tencent unencrypted.

Here, you’ll see it in a term called “game telemetry” .

In-game data collection is used for two reasons: to sell that data later on, opening up new revenue streams for game makers, and to make games ever more addictive.

That’s a warning issued not just by privacy experts but by game developers themselves.

Sure, at a surface level, these parental controls in Tencent Games can help ensure a kid doesn’s sneak during the night and spends hours in a video game.

If Tencent uses its products this way, it’s clear the same goes for their games.

In January of this year, Tencent came under fire from privacy experts after it was found to scrape web browser history through its popular QQ Messenger, searching for keywords and storing the data it gathered.

This report came after, in 2016, the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab revealed that the QQ Browser, another Tencent product, regularly sent personal information back to Tencent unencrypted.

Here, you’ll see it in a term called “game telemetry” .

In-game data collection is used for two reasons: to sell that data later on, opening up new revenue streams for game makers, and to make games ever more addictive.

That’s a warning issued not just by privacy experts but by game developers themselves.

Sure, at a surface level, these parental controls in Tencent Games can help ensure a kid doesn’s sneak during the night and spends hours in a video game.

If Tencent uses its products this way, it’s clear the same goes for their games.

In January of this year, Tencent came under fire from privacy experts after it was found to scrape web browser history through its popular QQ Messenger, searching for keywords and storing the data it gathered.

This report came after, in 2016, the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab revealed that the QQ Browser, another Tencent product, regularly sent personal information back to Tencent unencrypted.

Here, you’ll see it in a term called “game telemetry” .

In-game data collection is used for two reasons: to sell that data later on, opening up new revenue streams for game makers, and to make games ever more addictive.

That’s a warning issued not just by privacy experts but by game developers themselves.

Sure, at a surface level, these parental controls in Tencent Games can help ensure a kid doesn’s sneak during the night and spends hours in a video game.

If Tencent uses its products this way, it’s clear the same goes for their games.

In January of this year, Tencent came under fire from privacy experts after it was found to scrape web browser history through its popular QQ Messenger, searching for keywords and storing the data it gathered.

This report came after, in 2016, the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab revealed that the QQ Browser, another Tencent product, regularly sent personal information back to Tencent unencrypted.

Here, you’ll see it in a term called “game telemetry” .

In-game data collection is used for two reasons: to sell that data later on, opening up new revenue streams for game makers, and to make games ever more addictive.

That’s a warning issued not just by privacy experts but by game developers themselves.

Sure, at a surface level, these parental controls in Tencent Games can help ensure a kid doesn’s sneak during the night and spends hours in a video game.

If Tencent uses its products this way, it’s clear the same goes for their games.

In January of this year, Tencent came under fire from privacy experts after it was found to scrape web browser history through its popular QQ Messenger, searching for keywords and storing the data it gathered.

This report came after, in 2016, the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab revealed that the QQ Browser, another Tencent product, regularly sent personal information back to Tencent unencrypted.

Here, you’ll see it in a term called “game telemetry” .

In-game data collection is used for two reasons: to sell that data later on, opening up new revenue streams for game makers, and to make games ever more addictive.

That’s a warning issued not just by privacy experts but by game developers themselves.

Sure, at a surface level, these parental controls in Tencent Games can help ensure a kid doesn’s sneak during the night and spends hours in a video game.

If Tencent uses its products this way, it’s clear the same goes for their games.

In January of this year, Tencent came under fire from privacy experts after it was found to scrape web browser history through its popular QQ Messenger, searching for keywords and storing the data it gathered.

This report came after, in 2016, the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab revealed that the QQ Browser, another Tencent product, regularly sent personal information back to Tencent unencrypted.