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Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

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Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#41
post #16
post #10

[Off-topic] - What's with all the "China is evil" articles lately ? Are there any websites (non-chinese) where I can find news about positive advancements in the country ? This whole anti-China hype train got me intrigued.

I am seeing the same thing. It seems to me an attempt to demonize the country for war or "us vs them" purposes. One major focus that i am seeing possibly overhyped is the Uyghur "camps" thing. The US government and its corporate media are suddenly just so concerned about this and i haven't seen many images or anything to really back it up. Anyway, it seems 9/10 articles that make the news now are just negative, and i…

I think it's called lead by fear, something politicians/leaders are good at all throught history. Not only in China mind you. The Trump campaign is full of it, just as the nationalist movement in Europe.

Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#42
post #35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a completely pointless observation. PEGI is a pan-European (note: not solely UK - it’s an industry body) rating system. It doesn’t censor content or creativity, it just recommends that younger people can’t buy extreme content. It’s not active censorship. Ofcom doesn’t apply to games - it’s TV, radio, phones, communications regulator (Office of Communications). The ICO regulates data protection and privacy. In…

Perhaps you answered your own question. Uk has many cards up its sleeve to censor china for whatever reason it needs.

I just pointed out how the UK does not have cards up it’s sleeve.

But as you seem to know something I don’t, please enlighten me - any examples of the UK government actually censoring games?

Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#43
post #12

What is the solution to China either constantly banning our products and then cloning them or counterfeiting what's not banned? We're losing billions.

Their country, their rules. The US has no God given right to world domination with their products.

Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#44

If the post is accurate as a translation/source, I doubt those stated reasons are the true motivations, since citing 'blood and gore' for Fortnite seems absurd. I speculate it is more likely a way to carefully manipulate the competitive landscape for a highly-lucrative industry (gaming), so as to favor local companies (and yes, I see Tencent is impacted). This should really be brought up in the on-going trade negotia…

Blood and gore used to be enough reason in Germany to get a game altered?

The point was that there is no blood and gore in Fortnite, therefore the cited reason can’t be valid, and the true motivation must be something else.

Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#45
post #12

What is the solution to China either constantly banning our products and then cloning them or counterfeiting what's not banned? We're losing billions.

Um, that's how a country moves up in the world.

Free trade is from some points of view an illusion. Markets are ruled by the most powerful up to a point. If a country wishes to boost its' industry, then state intervention to market forces is, when used keenly, a useful tool.

The fact that most industrial countries bootstrapped their development by happily ripping of patents and supporting their own industries through state intervention is often forgotten nowadays when discussing what is fair and what is not in global trade.

In the early 19th century US ripped their factory tech from the british. Etc.

See for example:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp...

Similar stories can be found from around the globe.

So, just to make this clear: you cannot really argument from a fairness point of view, but, you can of course argument from US centric point of view - which is totally fine, just as long as you understand you are not on a moral high ground, but just supporting a particular team in a game.

Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#46

It's probably all bullshit reasons as usual with the CCCP to let their local market to compete with local stuff. > Fortnite by Epic Games/Tencent (Blood and gore, vulgar content.) This has to be the most ridiculous reason, Fortnite banned for blood and gore? It's just a cartoon game.

Letting the local market compete is "bullshit" now? I'm guessing China should be "fair" and let US gaming companies take billions out of their economy without hiring a single Chinese person or paying a cent in Chinese taxes?

Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#47
post #6

It's probably all bullshit reasons as usual with the CCCP to let their local market to compete with local stuff. > Fortnite by Epic Games/Tencent (Blood and gore, vulgar content.) This has to be the most ridiculous reason, Fortnite banned for blood and gore? It's just a cartoon game.

It is probably a mistranslation, they obviously mean that the "battle royale" theme is too violent: a bunch of strangers are gathered and have to kill each other until the last one. Personally, I enjoy that kind of games, but the fact that they display smiling cartoon characters killing each others can make some people even more uncomfortable. On steam, a game where you play a school shooter was recently banned. Can…

The Chinese source says 追求血腥, which I'd translate poetically as "pursue the smell of blood". So there wouldn't have to be any blood visible on screen, as long as you can "smell"/imagine it. Essentially "overly violent", as you guessed.

This is really targeted at China's domestic game industry and various tendencies the Party disapproves of because they believe those games to "corrupt the youth" or something like that. The leadership is full of very conservative people for whom a chainmail bikini verges on pornography.

Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#48
post #46

It's probably all bullshit reasons as usual with the CCCP to let their local market to compete with local stuff. > Fortnite by Epic Games/Tencent (Blood and gore, vulgar content.) This has to be the most ridiculous reason, Fortnite banned for blood and gore? It's just a cartoon game.

Letting the local market compete is "bullshit" now? I'm guessing China should be "fair" and let US gaming companies take billions out of their economy without hiring a single Chinese person or paying a cent in Chinese taxes?

“Letting the local market compete” is not among the listed reasons, so if that were the true reason the listed reasons would indeed be “bullshit”

Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#49
post #42
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you answered your own question. Uk has many cards up its sleeve to censor china for whatever reason it needs.

I just pointed out how the UK does not have cards up it’s sleeve. But as you seem to know something I don’t, please enlighten me - any examples of the UK government actually censoring games?

Games are media. Even the app store has censorship requirements that you must follow. You can lobby to your government to introduce more stringent cencorship laws on Chinese exports to your country if you want, because, well, its just not fair that chinese has inport laws, just like many other countries.

Re: Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9

#50
post #16
post #10

[Off-topic] - What's with all the "China is evil" articles lately ? Are there any websites (non-chinese) where I can find news about positive advancements in the country ? This whole anti-China hype train got me intrigued.

I am seeing the same thing. It seems to me an attempt to demonize the country for war or "us vs them" purposes. One major focus that i am seeing possibly overhyped is the Uyghur "camps" thing. The US government and its corporate media are suddenly just so concerned about this and i haven't seen many images or anything to really back it up. Anyway, it seems 9/10 articles that make the news now are just negative, and i…

The Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, ChinaFile [0], Foreign Policy magazine [1], Deutsche Welle, Amnesty International, and various academics have all done great independent reporting on the subject, if you care to look. Shawn Zhang [2] has done extensive open-source satellite image analysis to locate and identify many suspected camps.

If you believe in gravitational waves, the speed of light, and DNA, all things whose existence can only (for most) be directly observed and described by trusted experts, then trust the international press when they say something's going very wrong in Xinjiang.

[0] http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/postcard/million-... [1] https://asiasociety.org/video/tragedy-xinjiang-all-my-uighur... [2] https://medium.com/@shawnwzhang

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