Not necessarily. Go is definitely not the target of these laws so I doubt they will go as far as preventing Chinese servers from being accessed by foreigners.
Trying to police and prevent minors who are willing and able to get a VPN from playing Go won’t be their priority. I think they would go after the VPN’s first before closing every Chinese game from foreigners.
Also note that restrictions are nothing new from China. They closed some loopholes to them in the ‘problem’ games like League of Legends and battle royale games but Go hasn’t had any major effects.
Asking for id card and not managing foreigner id is a very easy, unshiny and efficient way to close a community (being their goal or not) I experienced this 10 yrs ago when they started to require an id card for internet cafe in which i can’t go anymore since then.
I may worry that same happens now for the chinese gaming community, in which go is included.
VPN has nothing to do here, that won’t bypass an id requirement from a go server.
What would make go an exception in the online games? I didn’t read anything about it.
Who said exception? They have had ID laws and regulations for a while now. They are not targeting board games. Sure, there is a chance that Tencent and eweiqi are proactive and shut down foreigner access but they had the same decision to make two or three years ago and didn’t.
I would not assume that they will make a different decision with these regulations.
Go isn’t an exception to identification laws but it does seem to be treated differently than online games that separate ID verified Chinese accounts and everyone else. I don’t know whether that separation is regulated by law or a business decision by Tencent/NetEase to try to prevent further regulation. If it is the former then Tencent and eweiqi have been operating illegally already.
This is not just for online games. If your country phone code is not in the list you simply can’t verify your online account, no matter what kind of account you have. Therefore, the website or media is controlled and you can’t participate. VPN is not a solution, governements get smarter every day
I’m not sure why and how online gaming and online community culture suddenly gets that kind of attention from the Chinese authorities, but judging from historical examples of elsewhere, they’ll probably shut down a couple of competitors, promote “ethical” internet use for some time, apply a couple more taxes on “digital stuff” then re-allow everything when profits start going downhill.
@Groin I was concerned about my various accounts across different games as well, but it looks like all of my WeChat connected accounts are fine (I verified real-name registration many years ago for WeChat Pay, and they accepted my passport). If you are signed in with WeChat you probably shouldn’t have a problem.
