Good news for Chinese streamers, as gaming giant Tencent has introduced a new set of rules about what streamers can and cannot do while streaming their titles! Wait, that’s not good news. It’s arguably bad news, as the dozen rules include a few rules that make a certain amount of sense (no promoting cheating software or violating the Terms of Service) and other rules that are both broad and absolute in their potential implementation (violating Chinese cultural values is also a no-no, which includes bringing up things like religion or politics).
This is not entirely surprising, however, as Tencent has already been doing its best to get out ahead of changing Chinese regulation, with experiments on locking kids out via facial recognition technology and expanding child blocks across its various titles. The aim seems to be to make sure that children are not exposed to inappropriate content across a broad spectrum, which could be argued to be a noble motivation; the implementation, on the other hand, still leaves something to be desired.
