China Drafts Laws to Keep Gamers from Chatting with Foreigners
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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “taking its political censorship to the extreme by disconnecting Chinese online gamers from their guildmates outside China,” as Taiwan News put it on Wednesday.
In other words, the CCP is preparing to closely monitor, censor, and block communications between Chinese gamers and the foreigners they play with.
The latest flex of the CCP’s authoritarian muscles began with a Nintendo game called Animal Crossing, a laid-back game about simple village life in a cartoon world of talking animals whose emphasis on pleasant social interaction has been credited with driving sales of the Nintendo Switch video game system during pandemic lockdowns around the globe. Animal Crossing provides a non-competitive, nonviolent virtual environment where players spend a good deal of time hanging out with each other and working together on low-pressure constructive activities.
The Chinese Communists cannot abide that level of social interaction between their captive citizens and the rest of the world, since they might start discussing forbidden topics like Hong Kong or the CCP’s culpability for the coronavirus pandemic.
Animal Crossing was banned outright — or more precisely pulled from game retailers without explanation by invoking some long-ignored import controls — while other games will be closely monitored and censored with a package of new measures that includes a curfew for younger gamers and limits on how much money they can spend on games.
From Wednesday’s Taiwan News report on the CCP’s online gaming censorship drive:
On April 10, China banned the popular social simulation video game in which gamers can create a home and interact with cute animal villagers, owing to Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong revealing a customized scene in the game which reads “Free Hong Kong” and mocks Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Several other players were also found leveraging the game to vent their discontent with the CCP and making satirical content related to the CCP’s failure to tackle the virus.
The communist regime is said to have noticed an authority vacuum in online multiplayer games, which enables people to freely socialize without monitoring. Local metropolises are scrambling to draft laws to expand the scope of online censorship in video games and even prohibit gamers from meeting and chatting with people on the other side of the Great Firewall, according to LTN, which cited news from a Chinese gaming forum.
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.
Taiwan News expected the CCP to put a high priority on keeping Chinese gamers from “learning how the world is reacting to Beijing’s handling of the outbreak and subsequent cover-ups.”
This is what Joshua Wong did with his little chunk of Animal Crossing real estate:
This is what we do in #AnimalCrossing… maybe it’s why these people are so anxious to go back to the game!! pic.twitter.com/vVeaGq54lv
— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒
< >
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “taking its political censorship to the extreme by disconnecting Chinese online gamers from their guildmates outside China,” as Taiwan News put it on Wednesday.
In other words, the CCP is preparing to closely monitor, censor, and block communications between Chinese gamers and the foreigners they play with.
The latest flex of the CCP’s authoritarian muscles began with a Nintendo game called Animal Crossing, a laid-back game about simple village life in a cartoon world of talking animals whose emphasis on pleasant social interaction has been credited with driving sales of the Nintendo Switch video game system during pandemic lockdowns around the globe. Animal Crossing provides a non-competitive, nonviolent virtual environment where players spend a good deal of time hanging out with each other and working together on low-pressure constructive activities.
The Chinese Communists cannot abide that level of social interaction between their captive citizens and the rest of the world, since they might start discussing forbidden topics like Hong Kong or the CCP’s culpability for the coronavirus pandemic.
Animal Crossing was banned outright — or more precisely pulled from game retailers without explanation by invoking some long-ignored import controls — while other games will be closely monitored and censored with a package of new measures that includes a curfew for younger gamers and limits on how much money they can spend on games.
From Wednesday’s Taiwan News report on the CCP’s online gaming censorship drive:
On April 10, China banned the popular social simulation video game in which gamers can create a home and interact with cute animal villagers, owing to Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong revealing a customized scene in the game which reads “Free Hong Kong” and mocks Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Several other players were also found leveraging the game to vent their discontent with the CCP and making satirical content related to the CCP’s failure to tackle the virus.
The communist regime is said to have noticed an authority vacuum in online multiplayer games, which enables people to freely socialize without monitoring. Local metropolises are scrambling to draft laws to expand the scope of online censorship in video games and even prohibit gamers from meeting and chatting with people on the other side of the Great Firewall, according to LTN, which cited news from a Chinese gaming forum.
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.
Taiwan News expected the CCP to put a high priority on keeping Chinese gamers from “learning how the world is reacting to Beijing’s handling of the outbreak and subsequent cover-ups.”
This is what Joshua Wong did with his little chunk of Animal Crossing real estate:
This is what we do in #AnimalCrossing… maybe it’s why these people are so anxious to go back to the game!! pic.twitter.com/vVeaGq54lv
— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒
