China's gaming restrictions are an 'ineffective policy' that hasn't cut playtime

pcgamer.com:

The Chinese Communist Party has in recent years begun to try and combat what it sees as the problems with technology and gaming, and in doing so has made China one to watch for government regulators worldwide. China may not be a 1:1 comparison with any other country, and the regime is authoritarian, but the issues it's tackling and the way it's chosen to do so (in examples like crypto mining, an outright ban) are policy lessons: the question being do the restrictions work and, if so, how effectively?

In November 2019, the CCP launched new regulations with the stated goal of «prevention of online gaming addiction in juveniles», under which videogame publishers are obliged to stop players under 18 from playing more than 90 minutes a day (three hours on public holidays), and to stop them playing altogether between 10pm and 8am. The government was explicit about the fact it considered excessive playtime on videogames to have a negative impact on people and, despite some public grumbling, made the restrictions even more onerous in September 2021: minors are now limited to one hour of daily playtime between 8pm-9pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays. There are of course ways around this, like using your uncle's account, more on which later.

So: has it had an impact and reduced playtime? A new study pretty much gives its conclusion away in the title: "'No evidence that Chinese playtime mandates reduced heavy gaming in one segment of the video games industry" (the authors are David Zendle, Catherine Flick, Elena Gordon-Petrovskaya, Nick Ballou, Leon Y. Xiao and Anders Drachen, all of whom are computer scientists at various institutions). 

The study comes with some caveats but is based on a tremendous amount of