Five years ago, the Mongolian Government passed a regulation (No.410) for controlling the operations of computer game centres. According to the regulation in question, these  are allowed to operate until 8 p.m. during the warm months and until 6 p.m. during the cold months for children under the age of 16; they remain open for adults, all the year round, until 11.00 p.m.

Nevertheless, many school children under the age of 16 are playing computer games that feature extreme violence at the centres for days and nights without any supervision whatsoever. This has caused many parents to voice concerns.

Currently, 527 game centres are operating across the country, 296 of which are located in Ulaanbaatar. In February, the UB Police Department closed 33 game centres for violating the regulations. At a meeting of the Committee for Children, held on 23 April, UB City Mayor S.Batbold, instructed the official registration and regular inspection authorities to  examine the benchmarks by which the capital’s internet cafes and computer game centers operate by.

During the first quarter of 2018, a total of 19 crimes were recorded as having occurred in the game centres –  80 percent of the victims were children aged between 12 and 14.

Without doubt on-line gaming has many negative features, nevertheless, the hours of practice in the virtual world by some young Mongolians does appear to have reaped some positive benefits: In 2016, Mongolia’s top gaming team, ‘The MongolZ’, won the ‘Counter-Strike:Global Offensive’ (CS:GO) tournament without losing a single match to take home the first ever ROG Masters CS:GO trophy.