In response to threads like this:
EDIT: I couldn’t find anything official on plans for a CN D2R release so the following would obviously just apply to if/when they decided to release for CN region. There’s also no direct evidence I could find that Alpha was in CN region or that CN region was the reason for any censorship of the game.
This is an example of changes done with D3 in CN region:
Aug 2010 CN video game restrictions which are here did not restrict all that much in terms of blood, gore and so on:
http://www.gov.cn/flfg/2010-06/22/content_1633935.htm
It has general stuff like:
- (1) Violating the basic principles established by the Constitution;
- (2) Endangering national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity;
- (3) Divulging state secrets, endangering national security or harming national honor and interests;
- (4) Inciting ethnic hatred, ethnic discrimination, undermining ethnic unity, or infringing ethnic customs and habits;
- (5) Propagating cults and superstitions;
- (6) Spreading rumors, disturbing social order, and undermining social stability;
- (7) Propagating obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, or abetting crime;
- (8) Insulting or slandering others, infringing on the lawful rights and interests of others;
- (9) Violating social ethics;
- (10) There are other content prohibited by laws, administrative regulations and national regulations.
and so on and so on.
But then somewhere around May 2019 some new restrictions were put in place for CN and game developer Henry Fong who is based in Beijing had this summary for them:
"In summary, things that are now banned from games in China include:
-
Blood of any color (now defined as anything that can be imagined as blood)
-
Corpses, skeletons, and bones
-
Guts and dismembered body parts
-
The Chinese word for kill"
Source: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HenryFong/20190514/342566/The_Future_is_Bloodless_China_Bans_Blood_in_Video_Games.php
This was further backed up with other articles, ex:
https://www.inkstonenews.com/tech/chinas-new-rules-video-games-no-blood-dead-bodies-or-mahjong/article/3007275
"China’s top media regulator, the State Administration of Press and Publications (SAPP), has banned all games depicting dead bodies or pools of blood – and there is no leeway even if developers change the blood to other colors.
Previously, skeletons and corpses were not flat out banned in games published in China but regulators did prompt the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft to turn dead bodies into gravestones in its Chinese version."
I don’t know how D2R is releasing on the client PC - I haven’t looked at all into that in terms of what will be on the game client distro per region, i.e. the graphics could be regionalized in such a way that different countries and regions could have different versions. CN downloads and installs for example could have blood-less graphics while NA or EU based DLs and installs could have full blood and gore. I don’t know how they’re handling that.
But we do know one thing about D2R - it is supposed to have a new global server system where the entire world of players can play together. EX:
“With Diablo 2 Resurrected multiplayer mode using global servers, you will be allowed to use duplicated names which will be identified by the Battle dot net IDs or gamer-tags. Also, thanks to the modern Battle dot net features, you will no longer need to refresh your characters and they will stay with you all the time. Moving to the global servers will increase the matchmaking speed and help players from all around the world to play together.”
Hopefully they will localize the content and graphics for each region appropriately because they could certainly do that as mentioned earlier, where CN region would get blood-less gore-less client distro and all other regions would get unrestricted full blood and gore content.
