Forums / Media / Video Games

Things to note:
Emphasis on "might", since the news came from a Taiwanese news site (which we all know that Taiwan hates China's guts) and is said to have cited a Chinese gaming forum as their source (still haven't found the forum itself). I think it's next to impossible to get insider information about this one, especially now that China is expelling journalists from their country.

The announcement came several days after "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" was banned in China after they had found out that it was used as a form of virtual protest (Article), where players use the ACPatterns tool to express their dissatisfaction with the CCP with satirical images of Xi Jinping and "Free Hong Kong" slogans
(Article).

It is said that its local metropolises are drafting the law, and it includes other rules that further increase the reach of the CCP's political censorship, which I will describe below.

The CCP's control of its country's online interactions is the main reason why many people in the mainland use VPNs. However, this is now becoming impossible to do so due to China's "Great Firewall" which restricts VPNs from operating inside China. Accessing VPN services like Tunnel Bear in there will just give you an error code. Although there are other means to solve this like using a SIM card from Hong Kong…

Might be also worth noting that the game "Plague Inc." is also banned in China because of the ongoing pandemic.

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The main articles from which I got the news from:
Article 1 (English)
Article 2 (Chinese, use google translate)

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Thus:
- Online gaming in mainland China will be restricted within the country only. Playing (and possibly chatting) with multinational gamers in global servers will be prohibited.

- The rules include real-name authentication when downloading and purchasing games, and require games to implement real
-name systems which might mean that their players are only allowed to use their real names in online games instead of an online handle.

- The rules will also ban any form of map editing, character dress-up, roleplaying (not sure how they would go about this one when there are a crap-ton of RPGs out there), organizing "unions" in games (it might also mean clans and guilds), and depictions of zombies and plagues.

- The ban also prohibits minors from playing and going online
from 10 pm to 8 am and must not be online for more than 3 hours during legal holidays. Players between 8 and 16 years of age are also limited to a monthly "tuition fee" of not more than 200 RMB. Players between 16 and 18 years of age are not allowed to exceed 400 RMB. This is said to be a means to curb online addiction.

- Lastly, single player games will be included in China's surveillance, somehow.

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What are your thoughts on this? This would be rude of me to say but I say good riddance! A lot of hackers and bots in the games I play like CSGO and Apex Legends (holy crap the bots in this one) come from China and many of us were clamoring to region-lock it, and it seems that the CCP are doing it amongst themselves already.

A big F for honest Chinese players though.

inb4 Chinese gamers rise up

It horrible how we let China get away with all this shit just because we allowed our economy get addicted to cheap labour. RIP Chinese Furry ERP.

Also I think zombies were frowned upon in China before corona. Its some kind of cultural taboo going back to Taoism or something.

Remember when the CIA kept coming up with random-ass plans to assassinate Fidel Castro in the 50's? What happened to that? Why can't we have them do that for the CCP?

Really the dismantlement of the Communist Party of China is the only way this madness is going to end, we need to get rid of them somehow.

Although less hackers would be nice.

I could give a list of reasons as to why but the two main ones are "China is big" and "It's not the 50s anymore".

Darn, Now who will I be able to post the Holy Texts to now?

I am genuinely surprised that they have not done so yet, I honestly just assumed this was already a thing with them. Like, every time I find an Asian player online, it is either from Japan or South Korea; I have yet to see a single Chinese player in any online game.

Yeah, banning video games has always been a thing in China. They've once issued a country-wide ban on consoles in the year 2000 which lasted for 15 years (Article). Although by the time the ban was lifted, PC gaming already had 2/3 of the market. If you ever wondered why there are lots of Chinese bootleg games and consoles, that's the reason why.

Probably the reason why you don't meet any Chinese players online is either you don't live anywhere near China or you're ridiculously lucky. Me living in South East Asia means I always get paired with the Chinese on some online games I play.

There's another video game that got into hot waters recently called JX3, a MMORPG similar to WoW but with a martial-arts theme, also due to anti-China sentiment in its in-game chat coming from its Taiwanese players, prompting the game to ban those Taiwanese players and any mention of terms like "Wuhan virus" and "China virus".

Meanwhile other Asian gamers,