Erik Kain
Erik KainSenior Contributor
Games
I write about video games, entertainment and culture.
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Mass Effect gay romance options
China will ban games that include same-sex relationship, effeminate men and is looking to crack down ... [+] CREDIT: BIOWARE
China is set to crack down on video games with content the state deems immoral. According to a leaked memo, games must have “correct values” in order to be approved by the Chinese government, as well as an accurate understanding of Chinese history and culture.

The memo was leaked to The South China Morning Post, and details the types of content the government’s regulators will no longer approve. This includes:

Games that include same-sex relationships or “effeminate males” as well as games in which a character’s gender is not immediately apparent. “If regulators can’t tell the character’s gender immediately, the setting of the characters could be considered problematic and red flags will be raised,” the memo states.
Games that allow players to make moral choices between good and evil paths are also on the chopping block. “Some games have blurred moral boundaries,” the memo states. “Players can choose to be either good or evil… but we don’t think that games should give players this choice… and this must be altered.”
Sorry Mass Effect, you tick off all these boxes.

This comes after China recently announced new regulations to the amount of online gaming kids and teens are allowed to play in a week to just three hours. China has also cracked down on TV, banning “effeminate” or “sissy” men and instructing broadcasters to promote “excellent Chinese traditional culture” instead.

Oh, their list is much longer than that, also banning moral chocies in games is hilarious because there goes plenty of rpgs, what we're seeing here is something that is going to backfire for certain publishers who put basically all their eggs in the china basket without considering how volatile the market is under the chinese government.

Some people argue it's technically not banning but blacklisting regardless this will fuck over sales is major way since most people will not go the extra mile to acquire the games through other means or maybe that is going to hell too with survelliance and all other crap.

Still it's fucked up to censor the stuff, people could just choose to not buy the games they don't like sadly the government doesn't like that their people are free to choose how they live.

I wish Reagan was still around to outlaw China.

this could not happen any place other than China... I mean it's not like they pull this shit in the US or England right?
;)

They're restricting it, we're forcing it down people's throats at every given opportunity. Who is worse? Both are just as bad as one another. I'm sick of it.

Truth

Reagan is a criminal. He heavily funded far-right extremists (contras) and islamist extremists (al queda). In fact, he supported killing anyone, who would indanger US world control. And since US is essentially a land of immigrants, by "US world control" is meant the control of the globalist elite: Soros, Rothschild and other bankers behind the Jamaican (current overinflated paper money) monetary model, which used bribing and war as method of capital control. I bet you are also thankful to him for the reagonomics, but not to the Soviet system which saved Poles from the Axis furnaces.

imo this is a troll thread trying to incite another flame war (and already succeeding). Only a matter of time until it gets locked.

You need to understand this. The Chinese *socialist* system is geared towards improving and caring about the society in general. This is why it will manage any activity, which undetermines it - be it drugs, weapons, violence spread and so on.

The gender-affected people are on the very basic level blocking the development of families, they are not fertile, which will lead to the low birth rate. On the global level, this is a challenge for the state, hence the mute of gender-things in many countries (not just China) for underage cultural items. And hence, Chinese system is democratic (don't confuse democratic and liberal here), this is supported by the majority, so per democratic principle - the minority must obey the majority.

I don't think it bans the media, designed and labelled specifically for 18+ yo (adult) and at this age, one is considered grown-up enough to be able to address the topic personally. So, TLDR - birthrate and local mentality ("Chinese traditional culture"). You need to learn to respect that and not behave barbaric.

The real question is how much companies will cater to China. We know movie studies make different edits for different regions and that certain topics play quite differently to those regions. Even if they do plan with China in mind it will change the game everyone else gets.

If a game allows you to pick a same-sex partner, or engage in some sort of 'unapproved activity' as any kind of important game/story element, well that would require massive changes for a Chinese release. Removing a side character or doing palette swaps is one thing, but anything much more means the entire game might need some adjustments. That brings up the topic of how important some things are to the core of a game if they can be swapped out so easily, but that's not really the purpose of this discussion currently. It does mean we all could get a slightly different game than was originally planned because it had to be built around the expectations of releasing in the Chinese market.

This is all going to come down to money in the end of course. If the Chinese market can stay stable and lucrative enough I suspect China will get what they desire and PR teams in other parts of the world will do damage control. We might still get the uncensored version but with the magic of internet-land I'm certain it would be found out if the Chinese version was altered.

As a final disclaimer: I don't tend to play games featuring the themes they're trying to ban. It just hasn't come up too often in the things I enjoy. However I'm very heavily against censorship in virtually all cases. It would be disingenuous for me to pretend this doesn't matter just because it likely won't change anything for me.

Great news.

thx for this comment , so on the point
im so sick of these oh we have to make our game diverse forced political activism yep but first the the mass dvoting after the clique loses the debate as they usually do , then they start troll and derail the topic and then probably asks a mod to close it down
maybe next will be furries

i think this is the case too, clearly they just produce visual movies to customers who's gaming culture is micro payment click a lot mobile games

You know what is forced down people's throats? Hetero sexuality. Put on any music station, read a random novel or visit any movie theatre at a random time. Chances are very very high hetero sexuality is forced down one's throat. Do you have a link with the source so we can verify this news for ourselves?