Earlier I asked about online gaming in China:

An unmentioned, but interesting corollary to the story is, will the Chinese government regulate the virtual worlds created by these online games? If not, will they become havens for dissent and free information exchange, places to escape from the censorship and government regulations that is the Chinese Internet?

Well, it seems the answer was already pretty clear (my thanks to reader Josh Dill for digging this up):

Chinese authorities unveiled new regulations on Tuesday that will prohibit minors under the age of 18 from playing more violent online games, which currently dominate the Chinese online gaming market.

Effective immediately, all minors are banned from playing online games in which players are allowed to kill other players, an activity that has been termed Player Kills (PK). China’s Ministry of Culture (MOC) and Ministry of Information Industry (MII) have also ordered the country’s online game operators to develop identity authentication systems that prevent minors from playing games. These authentication systems would require all players to first enter their Citizen ID Card numbers before being allowed to play games that allow Player Kills. No timetable was given for when these authentication systems must be implemented [boldface mine].

Under the guise of protecting the children (once more, “for the children,”) I suspect the PRC government is attempting to police and regulate virtual worlds that could be used to express and spread dissent. Once the authorities know the citizen ID numbers of these avatars or online characters, they can track when the avatars make “seditious” remarks or spread “rumors” about government corruption and repression.

Welcome to China where even the video game characters can’t say what they want.