All over the world, governments try to impose standards on their citizens and as governments they can. Sometimes what the governments impose tends to affect a commercial company one way or another. Sometimes the effects are positive and other times they are negative, it is the reason why companies believe people in general should be in the middle or moderation.

In an article by Elaine Kurtenbach of the Associated Press, the posterchild for governments impose restrictions on their citizens is China. The country of China has the ability and often uses it to influence the correct decisions of the people. In 2021, regulators limited the amount of time children could spend on games to 3 hours of week, expressing concerns about addiction to video games.

In China, the 2023 China Game Industry Report showed sales revenue for the domestic online games is $55.7 billion with the number of people playing the games reaching 668 million. In 2023, 1075 game version numbers had been issued of which 977 were domestically produced and 98 were imported.

To understand China’s reactions, the country had very few landline phones, now days almost everyone has a cellphone. The companies such as Tencent Holdings make commercial transactions including banking much easier to do on the phone than most countries around the world. If the holders are not watching entertainment, they are likely playing a video game of one sort or another.

When the Game Working Committee of China Music and Digital Association made a decision to approve the games, the share prices of video-game makers such as TenCent Holdings Ltd and NetEase Inc., Huya Inc went up after falling for the past few years after approvals for new games were suspended.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every company has to work within the legislative framework of the government, ideally along the way it lobbies to try to ensure the government does the correct policies, but once in a while politics come first. It is delicate management issue, but a clamp down on the greatest profit centers of the company should never happen, Clamp downs on marginal items can be done, because the company is not making profits and has a wonderful reason to get out of the area. Politics can work for the company.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.