Fortnite, PUBG and Other Games Allegedly Banned in China

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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Citing a Reddit thread, PCGamesN reports that popular games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Paladins, Fortnite, and H1Z1 have been been banned in China, while others like World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo and League of Legends require "corrective action." According to the Reddit post, the 20 games that were reportedly being "reviewed" by the government were actually existing titles. Reddit can be a sketchy source, but an independent report from gamesindustry.biz seems to corroborate the claims. Experts note that this is bad news for publishers inside and outside of China. Ironically, the government crackdown could also encourage Chinese publishers to start pushing their games overseas.

The analysts warns that this does not bode well for anyone wanting to release in China. "Indications are that existing games with commercial licenses are not exempt from review, meaning more disruption for the market running into 2019," the firm wrote. "This will mean additional costs for publishers and developers looking to operate their games in China, even those with existing popular and commercially successful titles many of which appear to need changes to satisfy the regulators that they are suitable for younger players." The firm also notes that if the Ethics Committee is re-reviewing previously released titles, the waiting list for new games hoping to release in China "likely to be longer than expected", predicting the impact could be felt "deep into 2019."
 
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Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, so many countries keep trying to filter the world out. The only thing any of them have really managed to produce is a populace that knows how to use the system to beat the system.
 
I wonder if this will eventually start dumbing down games even more so that they can reach a broader user base for more $$$. Kind of like the movie industry already does ruining great movies...
 
Rahh said:
I wonder if this will eventually start dumbing down games even more so that they can reach a broader user base for more $$$. Kind of like the movie industry already does ruining great movies...
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That's my fear, as well. Game developers are already doing really stupid shit to appease the Chinese government so they can tap into that gravy train. It's only going to get worse since they don't want to lose that potential revenue stream.
 
Reading the link, it is suggested that this report has indeed been published by the Chinese regulators, but that as of yet no enforcement action has been taken, so the likes of PUBG and Fortnite are still playable.

This would seem to be supported by steam player stats for PUBG which seem unaffected. If China were to all of the sudden go offline, I'd expect the player number stats to take a drubbing

Rahh said:
I wonder if this will eventually start dumbing down games even more so that they can reach a broader user base for more $$$. Kind of like the movie industry already does ruining great movies...
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Some of the stuff the Chinese regulators are complaining about, "blood and gore", "vulgarity", "inharmonious chatroom" don't seem like they could easily be designed out, while still attracting western audiences. It seems more likely to me a game will be developed for western audiences, and then will be modded after the fact to meet Chinese requirements, like censoring or removing chatrooms, removing blood and gore, etc.

Honestly, getting Chinese players off of western servers will mostly be a good thing. That country has a serious hacking problem which ruins just about every game.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Reading the link, it is suggested that this report has indeed been published by the Chinese regulators, but that as of yet no enforcement action has been taken, so the likes of PUBG and Fortnite are still playable.

This would seem to be supported by steam player stats for PUBG which seem unaffected. If China were to all of the sudden go offline, I'd expect the player number stats to take a drubbing




Some of the stuff the Chinese regulators are complaining about, "blood and gore", "vulgarity", "inharmonious chatroom" don't seem like they could easily be designed out, while still attracting western audiences. It seems more likely to me a game will be developed for western audiences, and then will be modded after the fact to meet Chinese requirements, like censoring or removing chatrooms, removing blood and gore, etc.

Honestly, getting Chinese players off of western servers will mostly be a good thing. That country has a serious hacking problem which ruins just about every game.
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That's a best case scenario I can get behind, but are developers and their publishers really going to be willing to spend the money to not only develop a separate version of the same game but provide support as well?
 
Looks like all those PUBG players are getting their region lock, albeit by a different means.
 
Armenius said:
That's a best case scenario I can get behind, but are developers and their publishers really going to be willing to spend the money to not only develop a separate version of the same game but provide support as well?
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Well, I think it depends on how you do it. If you create a separate version that is identical except for a few disabled features, the added maintenance overhead is small.
 
med1kl said:
Looks like all those PUBG players are getting their region lock, albeit by a different means.
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All you need to do is get a bunch of westerners on Asian servers with pre-recorded voice messages about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and other stuff Chinese big brother doesn't want their people to know about, and eventually the region lock will be government imposed :p
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Well, I think it depends on how you do it. If you create a separate version that is identical except for a few disabled features, the added maintenance overhead is small.
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And with their mountain of money they’ll probably be able to easily accomplish this.
 
El Derpo said:
And with their mountain of money they’ll probably be able to easily accomplish this.
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It's just an incremental cost benefit analysis. Incremental cost of becoming china compliant vs incremental revenues from Chinese market. I bet the incremental costs are relatively small due to the game already having been developed, and the incremental revenues are massive, due to the size of the population.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
It's just an incremental cost benefit analysis. Incremental cost of becoming china compliant vs incremental revenues from Chinese market. I bet the incremental costs are relatively small due to the game already having been developed, and the incremental revenues are massive, due to the size of the population.
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The game is pretty zany though and has a lot of content that would offend their government’s “sensibilities”. I will never understand what sets them off at any given moment. It seems quite sporadic.
 
El Derpo said:
The game is pretty zany though and has a lot of content that would offend their government’s “sensibilities”. I will never understand what sets them off at any given moment. It seems quite sporadic.
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Culture difference. Not defending their censoring of everything but trying to offer perspective.

Over in the US, violence and gore is perfectly okay to be portrayed in games, but sex is not. Nude females are okay (although the age rating will go higher) , good luck selling a game with dicks in it though.

Look how we all lost our minds over the 'hot coffee hack' of grand theft auto. A game about drugs, murder, theft but as soon as sex was a thing, it became a big no-no and was a liability to rockstar, even though it was locked out and people bypassed that.

China takes the same approach to realistic violence that we do to realistic sex in video games. They go pretty far IMO but if you step back, it really is just a snowflake of a different shape than what the US does.
 
I was looking for the list of banned games after I saw an article about it last week. Can't say I'm surprised.
 
Over a billion people being ruled over. Not a good percentage of Chinese willing to stick their chest out I guess. I guess those Frenchman jokes work fine for Chinese dudes just as well. Murica muthafucka!
 
Good for China, and good for everyone else.

I can think of a few other nationalities that could do with a purging from servers...
 
In a related story Chinese men are now reported as being more like to go have dinner when their wife cooks and significantly less likely to beat them.
 
Ultima99 said:
In a related story Chinese men are now reported as being more like to go have dinner when their wife cooks and significantly more likely to beat them.
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Any research has shown video games have an overall cathartic effect and not only are not contributing to violence, but likely diminishing it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
It's just an incremental cost benefit analysis. Incremental cost of becoming china compliant vs incremental revenues from Chinese market. I bet the incremental costs are relatively small due to the game already having been developed, and the incremental revenues are massive, due to the size of the population.
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It's not that simple. It's still much cheaper to only do a neutered version of the game from the start and sell that version worldwide.
 
Ultima99 said:
See here:
https://hardforum.com/threads/fortn...rrested-after-beating-wife-on-stream.1973357/
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I'd be careful about drawing a link to the game as a cause.

This guy is likely just a bad person, with or without video games. Seriously, if you cannot control the urge to hit someone, no matter how much they are pissing you off, you are more of a child than an adult, and honestly belong locked up somewhere, not out in the general population.

If this idiot weren't hitting his wife over a stupid half-assed video game like Fortnite, he'd probably be hitting her (or someone else) because she interrupted his favorite sports game, or something else.
 
M76 said:
It's not that simple. It's still much cheaper to only do a neutered version of the game from the start and sell that version worldwide.
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Again, cost vs benefit. Neuter it too much, and sales will be hurt.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Again, cost vs benefit. Neuter it too much, and sales will be hurt.
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They don't seem to care about what actual gamers want. Or don't want. See the fool proclaiming the next dragon age as being political. After the giant faceplant of bfv.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'd be careful about drawing a link to the game as a cause.

This guy is likely just a bad person, with or without video games. Seriously, if you cannot control the urge to hit someone, no matter how much they are pissing you off, you are more of a child than an adult, and honestly belong locked up somewhere, not out in the general population.

If this idiot weren't hitting his wife over a stupid half-assed video game like Fortnite, he'd probably be hitting her (or someone else) because she interrupted his favorite sports game, or something else.
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I always hate how people and media draw the conclusion like that. Coorolation is not causation. Just because something happened after something else does not mean it was the cause of it.

Wife and I play violent games a lot, lately on a giant Dying Light binge, never once has either of us gone outside and rigged a blowtorch to a hammer and beat eachother with it.
 
Darunion said:
I always hate how people and media draw the conclusion like that. Coorolation is not causation. Just because something happened after something else does not mean it was the cause of it.

Wife and I play violent games a lot, lately on a giant Dying Light binge, never once has either of us gone outside and rigged a blowtorch to a hammer and beat eachother with it.
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i think streamers whom do it as a career have more difficulty controlling their impulses

even fans encourage more outrageous behavior with more subs and chatter
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'd be careful about drawing a link to the game as a cause.

This guy is likely just a bad person, with or without video games. Seriously, if you cannot control the urge to hit someone, no matter how much they are pissing you off, you are more of a child than an adult, and honestly belong locked up somewhere, not out in the general population.

If this idiot weren't hitting his wife over a stupid half-assed video game like Fortnite, he'd probably be hitting her (or someone else) because she interrupted his favorite sports game, or something else.
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Sarcasm meter broken today?
 
med1kl said:
Looks like all those PUBG players are getting their region lock, albeit by a different means.
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God I hated how PUBG used to patch during U.S prime time hours. Brendan Greene used to talk so much shit about Americans being entitled and how China was his biggest market. Maybe next time he will remember to send a few of those 1000 dollar cheetah bandanas to the propaganda minister.
 
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