Regulators from the Shanghai Information Services Association in China are moving to standardize notifications and evidence when players are banned from online games.



This includes notifications for when accounts are suspended (frozen) and when a player / account is banned.



There also appears to be a move to strengthen online identity and tracking of player’s virtual item inventories.



This is not surprising in light of some of the legal cases in China.



While there will, no doubt, be complaints about government involvement in games, this is yet another wake-up call to the industry to establish best practices & self-regulation. Some areas of interest to the government, such as stronger online identity, are also of benefit to the industry.



Also, clearer & more consistent banning and account termination policies and procedures will help avoid customer support hassles (and really bad press when these things get into the news).





Fascinating stuff. I imagine this would make it a lot harder to get banned, for one thing — and can you imagine the frivolous lawsuits protesting improper bannings? Once you lay down rules about the procedure for stuff like this, it would become legal fodder for challenge the same way processing criminals properly is.