With the Chinese government finally allowing consoles and console video games to be sold in the country, everybody was waiting to see how many censorship rules the government would impose on games (the Chinese government is known for extensive censorship of all forms of media, including movies, books, news, and even the internet).
Among the things that will get your game banned is anything that promotes obscenity, drug use or violence, insults, slanders or violates the rights of others, anything with gambling related content, anything that threatens the country’s reputation, or its natural unity, or its sovereignty, or its territorial integrity, or anything that runs contrary to the government’s policy on religion, superstitions, and cults… so this leaves, what, Pong?
Every single release, digital, retail DLC, expansion, standalone, must go through the approval process; on the upside, the approval process by law cannot take more than 20 days, and anything that is rejected must have a clear reason accompanying the rejection.
It remains to be seen if China will indeed be the important factor in the video game market that many believe it to be- most thought the same of India ten years ago when it opened up its gates to consoles and games, and while the Indian game market is admittedly fast growing in prominence and importance, it has turned out to be largely irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Whether China suffers a similar fate remains to be seen.
