If the post is accurate as a translation/source, I doubt those stated reasons are the true motivations, since citing 'blood and gore' for Fortnite seems absurd.
I speculate it is more likely a way to carefully manipulate the competitive landscape for a highly-lucrative industry (gaming), so as to favor local companies (and yes, I see Tencent is impacted). This should really be brought up in the on-going trade negotiations.
I noticed that all these games are the usual heavy hitters with one notable exception; Dota 2.
Very curious because dota 2 is definitely violent and has some scantily clad women (not as far as LoL but I don't think censors really care about differences).
The reason this is curious is because China is Dota's largest audience and Valve has announced that TI9 will be held in Shanghai. Important to note that this is a huge tournament with the largest prize pool in all of esports (T8 was $25.5 Million).
Recently Valve banned a player from participating in a tournament in China for making racist remarks towards the Chinese in a public match and many believe that this is Valve bending to Chinese interests. [1] Valve has also recently announced that they will be releasing Steam China after years of working with Perfect World as a middle man[2] .
Valve has censored heroes and abilities to appease Chinese Censors and has been able to more or less keep it only on the Chinese Client. [3] (Rip Skeleton King)
Interesting times ahead with more and more games and films entering the Chinese market.
As someone else mentioned, Fortnite is tencents game, they’re a 40% stakeholder in epic and this is a huge upset for them. So maybe this is like you said temporary.
There's actually multiple branches of PUBGMobile, a Chinese version (called TIMI) and the rest of the world (Lightspeed/Quantum.) Both were begun and developed in parallel, are pretty close in gameplay and mechanics but each has their nuances. The TIMI version notably has most of the premium clothing and items for free since lootbox systems are considered gambling in China. Also, green blood.
It is probably a mistranslation, they obviously mean that the "battle royale" theme is too violent: a bunch of strangers are gathered and have to kill each other until the last one.
Personally, I enjoy that kind of games, but the fact that they display smiling cartoon characters killing each others can make some people even more uncomfortable.
On steam, a game where you play a school shooter was recently banned. Can cartoon graphics and absence of blood make a school shooter acceptable?
The Chinese source says 追求血腥, which I'd translate poetically as "pursue the smell of blood". So there wouldn't have to be any blood visible on screen, as long as you can "smell"/imagine it. Essentially "overly violent", as you guessed.
This is really targeted at China's domestic game industry and various tendencies the Party disapproves of because they believe those games to "corrupt the youth" or something like that. The leadership is full of very conservative people for whom a chainmail bikini verges on pornography.
Letting the local market compete is "bullshit" now? I'm guessing China should be "fair" and let US gaming companies take billions out of their economy without hiring a single Chinese person or paying a cent in Chinese taxes?
> Letting the local market compete is "bullshit" now?
It was bullshit before too. This is nothing but another form of candlemaker's petition.[1] Why is welfare of corporations more important than free choice of consumers? Why not let consumers voluntarily decide where they want to take their business?
Xi knows how very corrupt China is and is repulsed by the
all-encompassing commercialization of Chinese society,
with its attendant nouveau riche, official corruption,
loss of values, dignity, and self-respect, and such "moral
evils" as drugs and prostitution, the professor stated.
The professor speculated that if Xi were to become the
Party General Secretary, he would likely aggressively
attempt to address these evils, perhaps at the expense of
the new moneyed class.
The reason hardly anyone knows the names of important party members after Deng Xiaoping and before Xi Jingping is that it was policy. Deng recognised the dangers of creating a cult of personality, such as he had witnessed (and suffered) under Mao.
Xi is quickly reversing this, presenting his person and ideas as central tenets of the party. It's a direction that should cause concern, since I think it's mainly Deng's policies that laid the groundwork for China's rise and current status on the world stage.
It is great to see a rumour posted on NGA, then badly translated and posted onto reddit and now reposted on some other messageboard with some editorialising and now reported as fact on HN.
Interesting. I forgot NGA as one of the influential online forums in China when I wrote about that topic.
For those who don't know, NGA was originally a forum about World of Warcraft (the online game). Then it got popular and became more generic , similar to the "wow" subforum on Baidu Tieba (Chinese equivalent of reddit, but earlier than reddit).
The irony would've been so amusing had they completely banned Diablo. Considering how Blizzard made the new diablo mobile game mostly because of the Chinese market.
Free trade is from some points of view an illusion. Markets are ruled by the most powerful up to a point. If a country wishes to boost its' industry, then state intervention to market forces is, when used keenly, a useful tool.
The fact that most industrial countries bootstrapped their development by happily ripping of patents and supporting their own industries through state intervention is often forgotten nowadays when discussing what is fair and what is not in global trade.
In the early 19th century US ripped their factory tech from the british. Etc.
Similar stories can be found from around the globe.
So, just to make this clear: you cannot really argument from a fairness point of view, but, you can of course argument from US centric point of view - which is totally fine, just as long as you understand you are not on a moral high ground, but just supporting a particular team in a game.
regime change by cutting off their benefits and forcing unrest seems to be the only way. waaaay too many countries are having their industries undercut by cheap chinese imports that basically rip off products.
the only good thing trump has done is the china tariffs
"regime change by cutting off their benefits and forcing unrest seems to be the only way"
You do realize the number of countries US has destabilized over the years is not an insignificant one?
And that the results have seldom been satisfactory to anyone but the particular companies that benefitted from the escapade?
What you are saying amounts to that the right of american companies to make a profit is more important than the political sovereignty, happiness and wellness of peoples living in countries which threat these profits.
china threatens more than america, india,pakistan, most of the african countries with a chinese presence are all being affected and destabilized coz of china's policies and ambitions.
it can easily become the cause of another world war,better their govt become destabilized than the whole world
[Off-topic] - What's with all the "China is evil" articles lately ? Are there any websites (non-chinese) where I can find news about positive advancements in the country ? This whole anti-China hype train got me intrigued.
Positive advancements? From whose perspective? I am sure the Chinese government and many Chinese views these articles positively. The article is pretty matter of fact just listing things that are banned and why. They see the games as immoral and are taking action, now whether or not that’s the real reason who knows.
I mean China state sponsors corporate espionage and supports copyright infringement like no other country in the world. It also has essentially a second internet because it so heavily censors its own. It also locks up millions of a cultural group into concentration camps. I just don’t see a lot of positive advancements in general and I’ve been there as well. This isn’t just from the news.
Sometimes things are reported overwhelmingly negative because they are, in fact, overwhelmingly negative. It’s not always a bias it’s just reality.
Well, in the Xi era China has a) become more of an overtly fascist dictatorship and b) harder for Westerners to make money in, so because of b) there's more incentive to focus on a)
Still lots of great stuff happening there, so long as you're not an ethnic minority, religious, LGBT, disabled, an addict, mentally ill, interested in social change, or too poor to afford your own private oxygen and food supply
Ethnic and religious minorities are also persecuted all over the US and Europe, it may not be physically (except if you're black in the US) but there's definitely a psychological warfare being declared against these groups through mass media and culture (movies, tv shows, literature ...). I'm not too sure we can give lessons to the Chinese government on this subject.
Persecuted? I mean, maybe there's social stigma. But I can start a local chapter of "<some_minority> support group" and no one is going to knock on my door and disappear me in the night. I can make a website that's entirely dedicated to criticizing my government, and my internet connection won't be blocked. I can jaywalk across the street without a CCTV camera auto-detecting my face, associating it with my Citizen Social Credit score, and then having it be broadcast on a massive digital billboard to shame me in front of thousands of people.
Okay, that started to drift from your original point a bit, my bad.
> But I can start a local chapter of "<some_minority> support group" and no one is going to knock on my door and disappear me in the night.
Absolutely true. But you WILL not be given access to venues to host events, and you will most certainly be labeled a "violent activist group" or (if you're from a particular religious group) be accused of "feeding the fire of terrorism". With all the negative consequences that come with that. (This is not science fiction by the way, it happened in a certain west european country not too long ago).
So yeah, I'm not sure it's a better deal.
I wasn't trying to start a flame war or anything. I just find the hate towards china very curious and very dangerous. What bothers me isn't necessarily the negative criticism it's rather the fact that we're accusing them of things the US and Europe have been guilty of for centuries, but you're right we're drifting away from the main topic of the article.
>I'm not too sure we can give lessons to the Chinese government on this subject.
I simply must call BS.
Are the Germans not qualified to give lessons on the subject of pervasive surveillance, or the concentration of thousands into camps on the basis of their religion? Are the Bosniaks not qualified to speak of ethnic cleansing, particularly as it applies to a Muslim population? Are the British, whose colonial empire committed many of the same crimes China seems intent on repeating, without any wisdom to offer on the subject?
Perhaps the recent density of criticism directed at China, in particular reports on the surveillance state and concentration camps in Xinjiang, are signs that something has gone very wrong.
You speak as if western powers invading, destroying and supporting coup d'etats in foreign nations is a thing of the past. It's not. We are right to bring up the issue of Tibet but the chinese would be more than happy to mention the endless list of countries the west has destroyed/seriously compromised in all parts of the world (central/south america, the middle-east, central asia and now even Africa).
I do not have a specific website in mind. But, there are some news about some cool Chinese accomplishments: they will send a robot on the far side of the Moon soon; they are leading in electricle vehicules and public transport, photovoltaic pannels, electonic payments. They have some promising research in Thorium-based plants.
Thanks this is the kind of stuff I want to read about. Obviously no country is perfect and the chinese govt have their flaws without a doubt, but politics aside It's still a fascinating country with an immense culture.
I recently started a blog that might interest you. The focus is on technology industry in China, as well as some tech related political issues. Links are in my profile.
I try to be as neutral as possible, but as an overseas Chinese, I can't help but tends to have a slight bias towards Chinese government.
I am seeing the same thing. It seems to me an attempt to demonize the country for war or "us vs them" purposes. One major focus that i am seeing possibly overhyped is the Uyghur "camps" thing. The US government and its corporate media are suddenly just so concerned about this and i haven't seen many images or anything to really back it up. Anyway, it seems 9/10 articles that make the news now are just negative, and it seems the frequency of articles is suddenly much higher.
The Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, ChinaFile [0], Foreign Policy magazine [1], Deutsche Welle, Amnesty International, and various academics have all done great independent reporting on the subject, if you care to look. Shawn Zhang [2] has done extensive open-source satellite image analysis to locate and identify many suspected camps.
If you believe in gravitational waves, the speed of light, and DNA, all things whose existence can only (for most) be directly observed and described by trusted experts, then trust the international press when they say something's going very wrong in Xinjiang.
I just feel like i'm being programmed to be pro regime-change in China. I don't trust Amnesty. Amnesty International co-founder Luis Kutner seems responsible for snitching on Fred Hampton and for his death and US "human rights" organizations seem like they are basically the CIA. Amnesty also published the debunked "Sednaya" report full of lies about Syria. The Xinjiang articles came up all of a sudden, up until just recently i had only ever seen one article about Xinjiang. The new articles seem to suggest Islam is being eradicated or something like that when it's simply not true. Here is another article i've seen that is more pro-china: https://dailytimes.com.pk/238763/how-xi-jinping-tackled-radi... . It's not a lie that Xinjiang did have a "scourge of extremism".
I think it's called lead by fear, something politicians/leaders are good at all throught history. Not only in China mind you. The Trump campaign is full of it, just as the nationalist movement in Europe.
In UK they use the PEGI rating system for games that influences the design process. They also have OFCOM, ICO, HMRC and even more.
Chinese companies cant sell games in the UK without complying with all the laws.
Sounds like another case of dictator knows what dictator does.
Perhaps china is retaliating for canada locking up a huawei executive for violating US sanctions on iran, or maybe china is exercising its import customs rights just like the heavy handed customs enforcment as demonstrated by the US and the UK
PEGI is a pan-European (note: not solely UK - it’s an industry body) rating system. It doesn’t censor content or creativity, it just recommends that younger people can’t buy extreme content. It’s not active censorship.
Ofcom doesn’t apply to games - it’s TV, radio, phones, communications regulator (Office of Communications).
The ICO regulates data protection and privacy. In what way is this related to game and creativity censorship?
HMRC is tax collection. The only way this can affect game design is via tax breaks - these tax breaks are not predicated on specific creative requirements.
So - how is the UK in any way similar to China in terms of game censorship?
Games are media.
Even the app store has censorship requirements that you must follow.
You can lobby to your government to introduce more stringent cencorship laws on Chinese exports to your country if you want, because, well, its just not fair that chinese has inport laws, just like many other countries.
my first comment illuded to the eagerness of the hacker news community to engage in china bashing.
I also pointed out that censorship is considered during the design process.
Here is a list of games we are allowed to know about before PEGI was enforced.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games
Games you are not allowed to know about would be sympathic to the cause of afghans, iranians, iraqis, syrians and many more things that sell newspapers and political elections.
Pointing out hypocrisy in the Chinese government's policies (competition, human rights, etc.) is not 'bashing'. Just as pointing out those things in other governments is not X bashing.
The reason it seems to occur more often with China is because China is the rising power, and probably the power of the 21st century - its actions will be scrutinised because its actions have major consequences for the rest of the world.
I will happily 'bash' my (UK) government over a whole range of things. Censorship in creative industries is not one of them. China has a long history of creative suppression and censorship.
I would assume that games sympathetic to the causes of Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, and others are not 'banned' or creatively stifled, just that there is no commercial interest or reward in such games. This is not censorship by a government. There's nothing stopping anybody making games on such subjects.
That's the difference between China (and other similar governments) and, for lack of a better category, western governments. China's government will intervene in creative processes, western governments will not.
I speculate it is more likely a way to carefully manipulate the competitive landscape for a highly-lucrative industry (gaming), so as to favor local companies (and yes, I see Tencent is impacted). This should really be brought up in the on-going trade negotiations.