China's Tencent turns to facial recognition to snag late-night child gamers

Chinese tech giant Tencent has rolled out a facial recognition "midnight patrol" function to root out children masquerading as adults to get around a government curfew on underage gamers. China bans people under 18 from playing online games between 10pm and 8am, part of a raft of rules introduced to weed out the excesses of gaming culture among the youth, from worsening eyesight to online addiction. But many young players have navigated the restrictions by using gaming accounts registered by adults. Online gaming giant Tencent this week moved to close those loopholes by implementing facial verification checks on anyone playing with an adult ID after the curfew.