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China to ban online gaming, in-game chat with foreigners outside Great Firewall
- jsjddbbwj 6y agoThis would've been a welcome move back when vanilla world of warcraft servers were still a thing.
- tedk-42 6y agoReally just limited to Animal Crossing - I'm guessing because they can't effectively monitor information on the platform. Dodgy article title.
- nayuki 6y agoRelated: https://time.com/5818993/animal-crossing-china-removed/ https://time.com/5818993/animal-crossing-china-removed/ "Hong Kong Protesters Spread Democracy Messages on Animal Crossing. Now It's Gone From a Huge Chinese E-Commerce Site"
- philliphaydon 6y agoHuh. It says that /after/ banning animal crossing it’s taking it to the extreme to block users. Which I take to suggest they will be applying it to other games.
- ShamelessC 6y ago> One-player online games will also be subject to surveillance, as a new real-name mechanism is going to be implemented in China. Also, the new law will not allow for zombies and plagues, map editing, roleplaying, as well as organizing a union in games — regulations which are believed to be inspired by the sensitive content made by Joshua Wong. I'll admit the article isn't exactly well written which makes me have trouble trusting it. But doesn't the above quote imply that they are in fact censoring other video games than Animal Crossing.
- avcdsuia 6y ago> I'm guessing because they can't effectively monitor information on the platform. I not sure about this. Usually, they won't let a social platform operate without a self-censoring team, I guess they will force gaming platforms to do the same.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- aorth 6y agoWould be good to have another source for this. The current site constantly refers to SARS-CoV-2 as "Wuhan virus" which might have been passable in January, but now is just racist and annoying.
- throwaway122378 6y agoYou are annoying
- philliphaydon 6y agoIt’s not racist. Calling it Chinese Virus is racist. china called it wuhan virus. And most of Asia continues to call it Wuhan Virus.
- JamesG124 6y ago> most of Asia continues to call it Wuhan Virus Do you have a source for this?
- alharith 6y agoDo you have access to the world's most powerful search engine that can locate almost any source for you in an instant?
- mirimir 6y agoI don't know. If you mean Google, it's been lobotomized over the past decade.
- drewmol 6y agoOnly when compared to SARS-CoV-2 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=Wuhan%20virus,SARS-COV-2 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=Wuhan%20virus,SAR...
- Xeronate 6y ago
- RileyJames 6y ago>> One-player online games will also be subject to surveillance, as a new real-name mechanism is going to be implemented in China. Also, the new law will not allow for zombies and plagues, map editing, roleplaying, as well as organizing a union in games — regulations which are believed to be inspired by the sensitive content made by Joshua Wong. Something will be the breaking point for this level of restriction/overreach in the name of surveillance. It would be hilarious if it were zombies or map editing/mods. It's amazing that Joshua Wang's actions have resulted in the game being made unavailable for an entire nation. Banning the entire game is also an incredible example of the streisand effect.
- jxramos 6y agoCertainly Streisanded me straight into looking up who this Joshua Wong fella is who made some so called "sensitive content". Must be too irritating to sensitive thin skin types https://hongkongfp.com/2020/04/15/activist-joshua-wong-trolls-chinese-censors-after-gamers-blame-him-for-animal-crossing-ban/ https://hongkongfp.com/2020/04/15/activist-joshua-wong-troll...
- aphextron 6y ago> Something will be the breaking point for this level of restriction/overreach in the name of surveillance. Nothing will be the breaking point short of political revolution. The CCP has gladly murdered its' own citizens by the thousands before and they will gladly do so again to maintain power. That's how authoritarian regimes work. Combined with the fact that they are powerful enough geopolitically that no other nation will do anything about it, China is set on its' dystopian nightmare future.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago> The CCP has gladly murdered its' own citizens by the thousands before and they will gladly do so again to maintain power That may be happening now via the virus. China's case count is still around 80k, where it has been since the virus started taking off elsewhere. Millions died in Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and then again later in his "Cultural Revolution". Not only did he lead the country through two periods of extreme death and famine, but also he is still an icon to many in China. Xi could very well do the same thing.
- iszomer 6y agoCall it the CCP Virus then.
- runawaybottle 6y agoWhat the fuck is wrong with China?
- yumraj 6y agoCCP, unless it was a rhetorical question.
- mirimir 6y agoNo, it goes deeper than that. The CPP is more like a symptom. The culture is so fundamentally different that it's almost impossible to understand. Sure, there's a "westernized" minority, especially in Hong Kong, but they're ~irrelevant.
- dpau 6y agoI'm against this tendency to alienate the Chinese as some unknowable "other". Yes, the culture is quite different than in the West, but we share vastly more through the common experience of being human. There are a lot of well-educated middle class Chinese who would hope for a more transparent and democratic system. But it is a complex and difficult issue. There are many of us in the US who hope for a similar change in our own country, and yet there doesn't seem like there's much we can do. Except vote, of course.
- null0pointer 6y agoI agree with you, we have much more in common than the current online zeitgeist would lead you to believe. Many of my Chinese friends are genuinely lovely people just trying to do what's best for them and their families. Just like the rest of the world. Unfortunately a lot of this attitude comes from the Chinese themselves when we see the knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of China with "you just don't understand China". Maybe so, but this attitude is not helpful. Though I definitely understand that reaction when I think about how I would feel if some foreigners started criticising my country. I think there are 2 important things I'd like people to take away. 1) You are not your government, especially when they are not elected. Criticism of a country's government != criticism of that country's people. 2) The people doing the criticising should take more care to specify the target of the criticism, and to understand the collateral damage it may have.
- verst 6y agoAdmins please edit title for clarity: China to ban online gaming with, chatting in-game with foreigners outside Great Firewall. Right now the title is very misleading and I was concerned that even on WeChat I wouldn't be able to talk to my Chinese friends.
- AaronFriel 6y agoBanning chat between Chinese and non-Chinese on WeChat only seems like a couple small steps down the slope, so I wouldn't be so sure your concern was misplaced.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoWeChat is already very heavily moderated and surveilled. The CCP's issue here is that gaming platforms hosted overseas are not.
- nerfhammer 6y agoit would be a big step, because it would make it much harder to do business with Chinese companies
- ur-whale 6y agoYou're using wechat? Very brave of you.
- billfruit 6y agoThis needs a better source. Other sources are saying this just a measure being thought off. Meanwhile no official word on this matter. The thing is there is lot of fake news going around regards China. Also they'd be more nuanced now. They will likely ask/force Nintendo to crackdown than doing it themselves..
- est 6y ago> This needs a better source. There won't be any better source. China will never publish these measures as laws or regulations, not in clear text nor formally acknowledge such "ban"h exists. It's an obscure code of conduct to extort companies in private sectors for "bad behaviour". And yes it will be arbitrary enforced, the "ban" will differ from time to time and varies between provinces.
- billfruit 6y agoThen how does any one know if it is fake news or not. This is not up to journalistic standards..
- est 6y agoThe only "proof" is some random screenshot from IM chat groups. I think journalist can write a headline like "Chat screenshot shows China tightens gaming ban" but it will be less clickbaity.
- unityByFreedom 6y agoAre you unaware of the degree of censorship in China? Taiwan's/other externals' reporting on happenings there are as close as you get to real journalism in China.
- billfruit 6y agoThis is wrong. Credible agencies like AFP and Reuters operate in China.
- rdrock 6y agoCould these be the drivers? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22885689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22885689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22886182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22886182
- _bxg1 6y agoWonder how Blizzard feels about this after all the boot-licking they've been doing for the sake of the Chinese market.
- hatenberg 6y agoMoving their servers to Alibaba data centres and swimming in money.
- thomasfl 6y agoI really wonder what censoring Animal Crossing will teach chinese children? Thinking about growing up knowing that so much is wrong and that even children can’t have a critical voice?
- proc0 6y agoI'm wondering how certain game companies will react to this because they kept censoring and changing games to please China for a market they might now lose to some extent.
- baconizer 6y agoTitle and article is misleading, as usual, alas. Being a Chinese gamer/coder is hard, everywhere you turned there's no less of anti-china content shove down your throat, at the same time an authoritarian regime squeeze on the other end. We get it, 1940s there's mass slaughter, 1980s crazy things happened when there's a nutjob in charge. It's a country with 5000 years of history and 1.4 billion people each with life stories living and thriving, and a govt having bag of problems just like everywhere else. But, to some people, like youtube/github/stackoverflow still not enough to tell me I'm less of a human being, my family my friends and our beloved dog are being 'slaughtered', serisouly Animal Crossing?
- LocalH 6y agoI’m sorry people are being so shitty. Some of us understand that we should direct our ire towards the CCP, not towards Chinese people in general.
- inawarminister 6y agoSorry, I must nitpick. Egypt and Iraq has 5000 years of history. China has 3000. Your first written record came in 1250 BC, latter day Shang dynasty. On the other hand at the same date Eastern Mediterranean has five great historical civilizations already, though nearly all perished in a collapse. Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Mycenaean Greece, and Anatolian Hittites.
- tal8d 6y agoThe Chinese firewall is looking less like a method of tyrannical control, and more like a ridiculous attempt at troll-shielding an easily manipulated populace. https://youtu.be/xN0vUlljX0I?t=120 https://youtu.be/xN0vUlljX0I?t=120
- myopenid 6y agoThe chinese themselves actually prefer playing on local servers due to the amount of shit talking they get while playing on global servers. Unending amount of Tiananmen copypasta and free Hong Kong slogan its sickening. Source: voicechats on csgo
- Der_Einzige 6y agoGood. They lag hard and they seem to hack and use cheats at higher percentages than non Chinese. There are lots of movements to segregate Chinese players onto their own servers in games like DotA 2 and Cs:go. The CCP decided that the people who spam the copypasta about how bad the CCP is were actually making an impact. China literally got trolled out of video games - but it's because they trolled the world first. Reap what you sow...
- me_me_me 6y agoFew years back I would occasionally run into groups of Chinese players that were creating 'bigger teams' in PUBG (usually you play team as team of 4 deathmatch with 100 players). They must have bigger groups queuing at the same time with same type of cosmetics to form bands of up to 12 players. Its a lot of 'fun' to play 4 v 12. Trust me. </s> As bad as it sounds I am glad they will be kept out by their own government.
- tal8d 6y agoI don't doubt it. Like I said, troll-shielding. The more interesting consequences of that don't happen in game chats though. The censorship apologists come out in force in the wake of a competitive player being banned for publicly supporting the HK protesters was a good demonstration of that. They were clearly struggling to understand the value of free-speech, and the fact that those accustomed to it are unaffected by "You wanna hurt my national pride?! Well I'm glad 9/11 happened! See, free speech is bad!"
- strategarius 6y agoComrade Xi: so many exciting things to borrow from North Korea or Russia!
- dazsnow 6y agoThe source is a politically-biased English-language Taiwanese tabloid known for spreading false information relating to the government of mainland China, especially regarding covid19. Doesn't pass the bullshit filter.