SoraNews24 —Japan News—

Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.

TOP

» Japan
» Japanese mom finds diabolically clever way to crack down on son’s excessive video gaming

Featured

Weird
Studio Ghibli
Jobs

Japanese mom finds diabolically clever way to crack down on son’s excessive video gaming

Casey Baseel Feb 16, 2018
Tweet

Worried your kids will find a way around parental hardware locks? Then get a lock from a hardware store.

When I was growing up, my parents never felt the need to forcibly set any limits on how much time I could spend playing video games. “Finished all your homework and chores, Young Casey? Then sure, go slay as many Final Fantasy bosses as you want,” seemed to be their attitude, perhaps because they realized it would serve as critical preparation for my future career.

But other parents are not so lenient, which is why some video games and consoles, including Nintendo’s shiny new Switch, have parental lock controls to cap kids’ playing time. The problem with such systems, though, is that tech-savvy kids can often find ways to disable them, and even if they don’t. But Japanese gamer and Twitter user @sasamipicata recently ran into a hardware lock he couldn’t get past…because it was literally a lock.

全国のゲームを長時間する子供を持つ親に言いたい
これはやりすぎな…(子供目線) pic.twitter.com/HvhZJOluWL

— いおり (@sasamipicata) February 13, 2018

Apparently @sasamipicata’s mom thought he’d been spending too much time playing games, and so they ran the loop of a padlock through the prongs of his console’s AC adaptor, preventing him from plugging it in and powering it on. “Speaking as a kid,” he @sasamipicata tweeted, “I’d like to say to parents in Japan with kids who play games for a long time that this is going too far.”

And this wasn’t the only electronic device of @sasamipicata’s that his access to was suddenly cut off.

( 'ω')ﾌｧｯ!?
完全に油断してた！！！ pic.twitter.com/NIjapAwuK7

— いおり (@sasamipicata) February 13, 2018

That second cord looks to be for an iPhone charger, which would be keeping with his mom’s frustration since @sasamipicata says he’s also a fan of mobile games such as the phenomenally profitable Fate/Grand Order.

Other Twitter users were quick to express their sympathy for @sasamipicata plight, as well as their frightened admiration of his mom’s methods:

“Having the cord right there, but not being able to do anything with it…that’s like emotional abuse.”
“I’m gonna have to keep an eye on my mom from now on.”
“Think I’m gonna go out and but a spare cord, just in case.”
“You could always go to the hardware store and get some bolt cutters.”

While that last one would be an effective unilateral solution in solving the immediate problem, given the willingness @sasamipicata’s mom has shown to play hardball on this issue, he might just want to wait until she’s agrees to unlock his gadgets, lest she dream up some even more inventively diabolical form of parental control.

Source: Twitter/@sasamipicata via Jin