Cai Wu, head of the Chinese Ministry of Culture, says that games “hostile” to China or “not in conformity” with its government will be restricted.
China recently made gaming headlines when its government announced that it would be lifting its ban on the sale and production of consoles, potentially opening the region up to hardware makers like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. While this was definitely good news, it also came with numerous caveats. For one, it was described as being “temporary.” The government also reserved the right to restrict consoles and games as it deemed necessary. In another recent statement the Ministry of Culture provided some hints as to what that might entail.
“Things that are hostile to China, or not in conformity with the outlook of China’s government, won’t be allowed,” said Cai Wu, head of the Ministry of Culture. “We want to open the window a crack to get some fresh air, but we still need a screen to block the flies and mosquitoes.” Wu promised that more specific guidelines are on the way, but just from this one statement we think already we can the gist of what these guidelines will probably be like. For instance, we can only imagine things like Battlefield 4‘s China Rising DLC will be no-no’s in the future.
This is, of course, not the best news for the potential console market in China. Then again, we’re not altogether too surprised. The fact that console’s have been banned up to this point should be a pretty good sign that government policies weren’t going to be particularly free and open when it came to content. Even so, it’s hard for us to look at the lifting of this ban as being anything other than positive. Some games are better than no games and, in the least, we can always hope that this move to “open the window” could potentially lead to something less restrictive in the future. Maybe. Someday.
Source: GamesIndustry International
