There may be exception clawed in for games where “China can conquer Taiwan” exists.
Basically, they can arbitrarily crack down any time on anyone who sells or manufactures in China. If the beef with Blizzard and the NBA escalate, I think big crackdowns start happening across the board.
Yeah, it didn’t occur to me how awkward getting a shipment of Flashpoint: South China Sea out of the PRC is before now. I’m genuinely wondering how the discussions with the factory went, or if they’re using another country for the printed components or something.
I can share some details I know about similar situations offline.
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Hey, remember this.
Why is China so weird about supernatural content? I get there’s laws restricting religion because authoritarian/communist suppression of beliefs competing with communism but China has a weird obsession with it even in the most obviously fictional content.
I mean, the US was like that until the 80s. Very religious parts of the US are still this way. Remember the D&D satanism panic?
How many school still ban Harry Potter? (Spoiler: more than you realize)
Banned books are often the best books. Though in this case… well it served it’s role, it’s gotten a lot of kids into reading for fun.
I see your point but its not done on a blanket national level. They still sold DnD books and you can still buy Harry Potter at a book store or on Amazon. Its also based on deep seated western crackpot Christian religious woo here, but as far as I understand there’s no deep cultural taboo on that sort of thing in China. Maybe I’m mistaken?
They don’t like supernatural content unless it’s Chinese. It’s ok to believe in fake martial arts and fake Chinese medicine.
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The US never had a sufficiently powerful national-level propaganda machine. They would have if they could have.
Be that as it may its still rooted in western religiosity. I’m still puzzled by the CCP’s frowning on it when the party line that the supernatural isn’t real, so why do they care about ghosts and monsters overtly presented as fiction? Does that not comport with the political position of the Party?
Blizzard is now kowtowing to the almighty Chinese Yuan
Don’t expect corporations to protect freedom anymore.
Additional info: Blizzard fired the two casters who were conducting the interview.
Also, lots of people are claiming to quit Hearthstone over this. /r/hearthstone is basically 100% negative. The game seems to have been on a decline anyway, easy to quit. I did several expansions ago.
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I was trying to get into it, but the difficulty of the single player game and now this shit made me uninstall it.
When I told my father I was palying DnD regularly (In goddamn 2011) he told me to “be careful”, with the implication left unsaid.
My headcanon is he was just concerned for your characters venturing into tombs
For video game publishers the reason is simple. If you aren’t releasing you game via a partnership with a Chinese firm (mostly Tencent) a Chinese company will make your game nearly identically in china and sell it there with no risk or repercussion. The only way to enforce any IP control in china is for a Chinese company to be releasing the game and profiting from it.
As much as the Chinese people might love basketball or Blizzard products it is very easy for the PRC to censor or downplay that and control access to the market. Essentially the relationship is companies desperately want into the consumer market there, not china desperately wanting western media products.
Once they have the product, they might not want to lose it.
You think Chinese WoW players wont be upset if they have to play a knockoff mmo? You think chinese basketball fans will be satisfied if they only get to watch cut-rate ball instead of the worlds best?