China Bans and Mobile projects

Community General Discussion
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So wait hold the phone. China banned all these games for blood, gore and what not. WoW, overwatch, league, fortnite, etc. What I wanna know where that leaves Diablo Immortal considering that was the main market they were trying to tap into. Is that even going to be allowed now? If not, holy crap what a colossal blow to that project amongst others going to mobile. I can’t see how they would allow it because the entire premise of the game is blood and gore…

Side note did anyone else read about China’s social credit system? It literally evaluates every single thing you do and gives you a score. Things like playing video games all day and what not. Yikesssssssssssss

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In addition, no criticism of China (within China) is tolerated at all. They’re a totalitarian state with a good surveillance system which is getting better day by day. It’s scary stuff, Orwell would be nodding his head if he were alive.

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Instead of posting a link, here’s an excerpt from a news article:

"A Reddit thread translated the results of the review process, LoL was banned because it featured “overly revealing female characters” and an “inharmonious chatroom.”

According to the user who posted the thread, “Inharmonious chat” refers to the perceived lack of effort by publishers to combat toxicity, vulgarity, and politically sensitive speech in chats.

Overwatch, Diablo, and WoW were all found to have ‘inharmonious’ chat environments as well. Overwatch was also blasted for showing “game visuals [that] promote incorrect values,” while the missions in Diablo’s story mode were found to “include fraud.”

Nine other games in the list failed the review entirely however and now seem to have been outright banned in China.

Most of those games are battle royales such as PUBG, Fortnite, H1Z1, and Ring of Elysium. All were banned for featuring “blood and gore.”

It is interesting to note that Fortnite’s cartoonish visual themes is famously devoid of any blood and gore effects. This may signal that China is not after the violence depicted in these games, but is instead targeting the battle royale genre altogether.

A hero-centric shooter game similar to Overwatch, Paladins , was also banned for showing “overly revealing female characters, blood and gore, and vulgar content.”

As with Fortnite, Paladins also lacked explicit displays of blood effects. This is interesting to note in comparison to Overwatch, which features blood effects to some degree, but was only cited for “visuals [that] promote incorrect values.”

It is still unclear as to what those incorrect values refer to.

With all that said, several of the games cited on the list are notably far more popular in China than in the West. These were also produced by influential Chinese companies like Tencent and NetEase.

Tencent, in particular, was hit hard by the review, as the conglomerate holds stakes in PUBG, League of Legends, Paladins, and three other titles in the 20-game list.

The companies whose games were included in the list have so far been silent on the matter. It is also unclear how the review will affect the esports industry in China, one of the biggest in the world, as several major esports titles were among those made to take corrective actions or facing outright bans."

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I grew up in China and live in the US as now. I think you two read too much mainstream media. No offense. For a huge populous country like China, surveillance(governmental or private) serves Chinese people’s best interest, security. Human bones and gore are indeed taboo because Chinese parents are much more concerned about what media provides their kids.(aka Asian dad). So I think Diablo immortal will fail miserably if they don’t make changes. Because China hasn’t established an age rating system, they just adopt the ban-them-all attitude.
If you have been there and lived there, you will realized it’s much safer during night time than the US. Chinese love liberty but abhor so-called “freedom” because the most thing they hate is chaos. So, it is an order-based cultural system so they have very different social infrastructure. I asked my Chinese friends who still live in China, they told me “why do you care/fear? Just don’t commit crimes.”
As an immigrant I can say both east and west still retain their cold-war mentality and lack interest to understand each other.

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You gotta stop watching Az, he cries doom and gloom nonstop… a true Alliance player.

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I don’t watch him? Power to him and his followers but his stream just isnt my cup of tea.

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lol, really?

The Chinese credit system can prevent you from entering buildings, it can prevent you from getting jobs… You get a low credit rating and you’re basically an outcast. Yeah, JUST LIKE credit scores in the US… lol wow.

I guess not being able to buy a couch in the US is the same thing as being a LITERAL social outcast in China.

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And what are your examples? Like I said, you got that from mainstream western media. I lived in China for almost 20 years and still having relatives there. We chat about this daily, before you refute my ideas, shouldn’t you provide at least some slightiest experience or reference about China?

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I am so sorry but I have to disagree with you. Our credit score here is NOTHING like China’s social score. What China is doing is beyond the pale and I hope one day their citizens rise up and remove those in power.
BEIJING (CBSNewYork) — China is rolling out a high-tech plan to give all of its 1.4 billion citizens a personal score, based on how they behave.
When Liu Hu recently tried to book a flight, he was told he was banned from flying because he was on the list of untrustworthy people. Liu is a journalist who was ordered by a court to apologize for a series of tweets he wrote and was then told his apology was insincere.

“I can’t buy property. My child can’t go to a private school,” he said. “You feel you’re being controlled by the list all the time.”

And the list is now getting longer as every Chinese citizen is being assigned a social credit score — a fluctuating rating based on a range of behaviors. It’s believed that community service and buying Chinese-made products can raise your score. Fraud, tax evasion and smoking in non-smoking areas can drop it.

China’s growing network of surveillance cameras makes all of this possible.

“It can recognize more than 4,000 vehicles,” Xu Li said.

Li is the CEO of Sensetime, one of China’s most successful artificial intelligence companies. It has created smart cameras for the government that can help catch criminals, but also track average citizens.

“We can tell whether it is an adult, a child, male or female,” Li said.

Ken Dewoskin has studied China’s economic and political culture for more than three decades. He says how the new scoring system truly works is kept secret and could be easily abused by the government.

And to top it off they are not able to protest this or try to clear their name as there is no due process. This is true Communism and is not wanted or needed in free countries.

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Veering vaugely back to the topic at hand, I suspect most of these “bans” will be lifted once the developers censor their games and/or pay some sort of fine.

Games make money. Governments want their cut, and then some. That’s true on either side of the Pacific.

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Erm no. Surveillance is used by the state. You have the reasonable expectation to privacy here in the USA. (Granted, the government breaks that law)

But just because they do it, doesn’t make it right.

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And I was talking about Chinese people. Different countries have different laws, that’s understandable. I should not use the world people there. I will edit.

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I feel like this all comes down to money. Which online games from other countries did they not ban?

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Wonder what will happen to the 8 Chinese overwatch teams. I’m not surpised by this move. XI has already done what he can to curb western influence and wall of his country from the internet (no pun intended) this move will hurt mobile games for sure…Not that it’s a big loss.

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I work with two guys (chefs) who recently moved to Australia from China. We were talking (yesterday, as it happens) about the smog in China a couple of years ago, and they were telling me about how if people mentioned it on any form of social media, their posts mysteriously disappeared soon after being submitted. I asked whether they understood the phrase “big brother” and they both knew what it meant, and said it was pretty close for China.

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what? US credit system does take in account debt-to-income ratio and account history. It does not take in account how you act socially AND whether you support the government or not, both are taken in account in the China system which far more dire consequences than just denying a loan like in the US.

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I think you’re talking about the last ban? This time it was for the unmonitored chat rooms and I don’t think it’s banned forever but they are requiring them to fix things before being allowed back.

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The games will be edited and relaunched into the Chinese market. That is the way it has always been. Blizzard will edit their Chinese game clients and they will be back on the market.

Edit: Yeah I didn’t realize this was from like 24 hours ago.

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Another more subtle aspect of the trade wars

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You are right they are different. Low credit scores only bar you from borrowing more in the US. I shouldn’t compare them. I will edit that.
Looked at your quote, then did a little research myself. The first example in your article was an infamous journalist who falsely accused other people and lost his case when the other party sued him. The court ruled against him and he was charged with defamation. Isn’t defamation a crime in western society? Even under Freedom of Speech, some forms of speech like slanders and hate speech are still illegal. I didn’t follow up Liu’s case but I trust court’s judgment as like other normal Chinese citizens. Chinese people really dislike trouble-makers who breed chaos. Journalists don’t get their free out-of-jail card in Chinese society. They aren’t holier than other occupation. You are responsible for what you say. This is probably the more preplexing part for western netizens. Like I said, people have very different world views and they won’t accept something out of their thinking frame easily. Bashing each other isn’t an effective way to communicate.