Incidentally the announcement comes within hours of a 11-year-old boy reported to have committed suicide due to online gaming adiction.
“Online games are a serious issue. To prevent such tragic incidents we are bringing an act regulating online gaming in Madhya Pradesh, whose draft has been prepared and we will soon finalise it,” state home minister Narottam Mishra said.
Last year the Chinese government in a crackdown on the blooming online gaming industry introduced a new law that forbids children under 18 years of age from playing video games for more than three hours a week.
The new restrictions limit the under-18s to play online games for just one hour a day between 8-9 pm only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. They can also play for an hour, at the same time, on public holidays.
Meanwhile, the issue to limit the access of online games to minors in Madhya Pradesh has come into debate following an untoward incident where a 11-year-old boy is reported to have committed suicide in Bhopal due to his addiction to an online mobile game.
The announcement of new legislation for online gaming, by the Madhya Pradesh government also comes barely hours after the 11-year-old boy was reported to have committed suicide “by hanging himself with the rope of the punching bag installed at the rooftop of his house in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal,” MP police said.
According to Additional Commissioner of Bhopal Police, Sachin Atulkar, the minor allegedly committed suicide and was found dead at his residence. “As per his parents, the minor spent around Rs 6,000 on an online game without their permission. Parents had deleted the app once. The probe is underway,” Atulkar said.
The state police is yet to recover any suicide note into the incident. The deceased is identified as a class 5 student. According to the deceased father, the child was “too much into online gaming.”