MeowCanuck: Expanding what Arcadius-8606 said, anything can be an addiction. That doesn't necessarily mean those activities should be banned because it should be based on the extent of its negative externalities. Rather, that individual needs therapy / deprogramming since if all video games were banned, I heavily suspect they'll just latch onto something else as a new addiction.
Regarding the topic, not all games are "spiritual opium". I suspect it's those freemium games with tons of microtransactions that were designed to be psychologically addictive in order to get the user to keep on spending (note: addictive is different than engaging). These are the troublesome games that should be regulated because they're maliciously hijacking your brain's reward system that users are unaware of, particularly the young and/or unaware that this new regulation specifically targets:
In response to the article, Tencent said that it will institute stricter limitations on minors' playtime in Honor of Kings. Young gamers will be limited to one hour per day during the week and two hours per day on weekends and holidays. Anyone under the age of 12 will not be able to make in-game purchases. China already has some limitations on how much playtime minors can have, but these new limitations are more than required by the government.
MeowCanuck: This 2016 paper also reinforces the conclusions of behaviour issues with children and teens playing more than 9 hours of video games per week. So maybe the CCP might have a point here.
