Uncontrolled addiction to screens has once
again crossed the line into extremely tense legal terrain. A father in Tanghe
county in China's Henan province has filed a civil lawsuit against four of the
biggest giants in the video game industry — miHoYo, Tencent,
NetEase and 37 Interactive — demanding the symbolic payment of ten yuan in
moral damages following his son's severe health crisis.
The young man, who turned eighteen in early
2026 while attending a technical school, had been mired in a severe addiction
to online deliveries for years. According to court records, the boy habitually
gambled until three or four in the morning, reduced communication with his
family to a minimum and lost about ten kilos. In just one of its main accounts,
it recorded an average of more than two hours of departure per day,
accumulating 1,868 accumulated hours. The situation hit rock bottom in May
2026, when he ingested eighteen fever capsules without being sick, suffering a
collapse that took him to the hospital for gastric lavage due to intoxication.
Far from seeking an economic benefit, the
plaintiff clarified that the sum claimed is purely symbolic. Its real goal is
to force developers to plug the technical holes in the system that allows
minors to bypass China's restrictions that limit play to a single hour on
weekends. The father argues that thousands of teenagers circumvent the block by
renting adult profiles or using their parents' IDs, circumventing facial
verification. Although the companies managed to postpone the hearing by
appealing to jurisdictional objections, the plaintiff maintains that the
companies have sufficient biometric tools to prevent more young people from
putting their lives at risk.
Knowing that loopholes in verification controls
allow thousands of young people to break the legal boundaries to play
relentlessly
