The anti-addiction game system designed to prevent Chinese teenagers from becoming online game junkies will be formally put into operation nationwide this week.

According to the eight Chinese ministries including the General Administration of Press and Publication, computer games that do not have such a system must be banned from operating in the future. As required by the eight ministries, less than three hours' game playing is healthy for teenagers, while the two-hour period beyond it is "tiring time" in which the gains of the teenagers will be reduced by half, and game playing of more than five hours is unhealthy and the gamers will have even fewer abilities to play well. This is a measure taken to force teenagers to go offline to have a rest or study.

Statistics from local media show that most of the players in China spend an average of two or three hours online and less than one hour of game playing every day, accounting for 63.5% of the total Internet users. In 2006, there were 31.12 million computer game players in China, less than 10% of whom were teenagers.