Tencent will require all players of its videogames to verify their ages and identities against police databases from next year, in an effort to quell concerns over excessive gaming in China.

The Chinese entertainment giant, which produces popular ﻿mobile games such as Honour of Kings, will launch mandatory user verification for all its games in 2019, but first will start with ten of its top gaming titles this year.

The announcement, made on the Tencent’s official WeChat account on Monday, is a bid to reassure the government that excessive gaming is not damaging young people in the country, which has been a controversial topic in China.

Last month, the company made age-verification a requirement for all its Honour of Kings users in nine Chinese cities including Beijing. Before next year it will expand the requirement to nine more games, then all of its games by January.

China has the world's biggest online gaming market and is home to more than 700m internet users. Honour of Kings has more than 200m monthly players, according to the company.

The increased measures by Tencent follow the Chinese government earlier this year bringing in a set of regulations to restrict the number of video games in the country and curb playing time for young gamers.