Ever since the china thing I was wondering about a few things, mostly what Blizzard changed on the chinese Overwatch client and what the chinese government has in influencing the game’s updates.
- Is Tracer still gay in China?
- outside of the comic that got nuked from high orbit, that novel thing that doesn’t affect the game in any way, etc. are there any references to lgbt characters being that, voice lines, pre fight convos, or is it just them being gay in a JK Rowling sense?
- Does/did overwatch have gore?
- obviously not diablo levels of gore, simple stuff, corpses, blood, etc.
- Does this mean we’re not getting a hero from HK? That whatshisface… Liang (I think) back when people were speculating who the new guy was before it was Doomfist, based on the old OW group photo.
- Those new policies in China, do they mean you need to be over 18 to play Overwatch? Will you need special permission to play for more than 90 minutes if you’re underage?
- Was the tibet map changed at all? Are they going to remove it or modify it to another map now that the new ethics board is eyeing overwatch as problematic?
- Ditto for Zenyata and his/her/zir nirvana ultimate.
Overall I don’t really mind china having a different .exe to the rest of the world, I mean at least they can play the game. That’s progress. The problem I really have is when decisions are made to appease the CCPD and it affects the rest of the world.
well i don’t know about overwatch but wow got totally changed because china has a bizarre thing about skeletons… you cant have skeletons because reasons?
as for Tibet not sure but frankly Mondatta kinda seams very Dali Lama inspired… but i think he is different enough that they may not care…
He better not try reincarnating without state permission though 
But seriously though WHY NO SKELETONS?! O_o
For them, it still counts as gore.
Freaking somehow, Chinese GOV logic I guess.
I was hoping they’d make Mei OP over there 
the truely tragic thing is china misses out on brilliant stuff like for example the sega saturn game Mr Bones
(a totally bonkers game that combine platformer and music based game play…
Except they are allowed to have Zombies.
Also did they change Zen’s Halloween skin?
not translating things properly is not unique to china though…
There are like a ton of character in jrpgs that are more petty boy looking males with male love interests that then get turned into females for US releases…
so that’s hardly new…
Make senses for those two countries.
I wonder how was it for Riot when they released Neeko?
Probably none existence in China. Any mention of blood is not allowed on video games if I remember correctly.
The Chinese media department took down the comic, not Blizzard. Technically speaking, the comic did see a Chinese release, so fans will still know that she’s gay even if they can no longer access it.
Did it ever have gore? There’s some blood particle and such on damage, but I don’t know if that’s an issue.
There is no Tibet map? Anything you’ve heard about a potential Tibet map is probably just speculation. I’ve never heard of this myself.
No idea why this in particular would be problematic.
They way it was explained to me was this indeed WAS the compromise albeit not one without controversy. There was some friction between Nepal and China mostly because of the territory in Tibet, a lot of the iconography does look tibetan, unsurprising since they used to be part of the same country.
From what I understand religious symbolism is forbidden in china, hence the gulags and slaughter of christians, muslims, etc. I assume this is also why you don’t see any churches in overwatch, or mosques for that matter, outside of that pharah skin with the hijab and none of the overwatch people are particularly religious. That’s also why you will never see Zenyata with a wheel with 8 spokes.
Like I said, I’m not really interested in the censored chinese version I’m more interested in what we can’t get because it’s banned in chinese territories and therefore cannot be in the international version of the game meant to be played by everyone who isn’t chinese or from HK.
I have heard Blizzard retool some of their other games to fit the chinese market, despite allegations to the contrary, it’s a fairly obvious move to make if you want to stay in such a large market.
The new guidelines sound very… broad. Overwatch IS on the list for ‘problematic’ titles along with PUBG and fortnite, the usual suspects.
My problem there is, Overwatch 2 looms glorified expansion pack though it may be, I don’t want the game being hobbled by restrictive chinese standards but there doesn’t seem to be any other choice.