Rumor: China's Online Gaming Ethics Committee Rejected Fortnite and Paladins
The reason is vulgarity and frank female images. The published data is called fake.
An alleged list of games that have been sent for revision or not accepted for publication in China by the newly formed Ethics Committee has appeared on the web.
The list is provided with comments that explain why this or that game did not suit the regulator. As a rule, complaints are caused by “overly explicit female images” and “uncoordinated chat” (perhaps this means a chat that is not regulated by the developer in accordance with the rules adopted in China, for example, does not filter prohibited words).
Those projects in the list that were rejected at all were marked as “bloody and cruel” and “content contrary to generally accepted norms”. Among them: PUBG, Fortnite, H1Z1, Paladins and Knives Out.
English version of the list
The list first appeared on the Chinese gaming forum NGA on December 10.
On the same day, an English version of it appeared on Reddit from a user under the nickname ZeroWolfe547.
The list may well turn out to be fake. Blizzard, which the committee allegedly recommended to correct Diablo III, announced on its official account on the Weibo service (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter) that it had not received any messages. But after that, her post was deleted.
Source App2Top.ru from a Russian company engaged in MMO projects, he also confirmed that “there is no ban on publishing games from the list.”
At the same time, the reliability of the list was indirectly confirmed to the GamesIndustry portal by an unnamed analyst at IHS Markit. The latter noted that the new regulator does not consider new games, but reviews existing hits on the market.
Perhaps this will not be a surprise for large companies. As our source noted: “Many are preparing for tightening in advance: they clean out all content from games that censors may potentially not like. This is any policy, even innocent (like the names and symbols of real countries), any eroticism, blood, and the like.”
For example, the Ubisoft giant recently planned to change a number of visual images on maps in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege to satisfy Chinese censors. However, after the dissatisfaction of Western players, he abandoned this initiative.
Now most of the teams interested in publishing games in the Middle Kingdom remain in a “suspended” state. There is no information about the new procedures, Ilya Gutov, Director of Business Development at APPTUTTi, said in an interview with us, “therefore, all companies go through the previous licensing stages and are waiting for news.”
He also notes that the status of China’s Online Gaming Ethics Committee is also not completely clear yet. According to him, now it remains only “to wait for news about the official jurisdiction and powers of the department.”
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