The situation with the games in China last week became a little more transparent. One of the ministries of the country shared how the process of reviewing games for publication is now structured. Specific bans for games distributed in the country have also been published.
Perfect World (Tencent)The process of reviewing games for publication
- The country’s State Administration for Press and Publications (SAPP) is responsible for regulating the gaming segment as a whole.
- The Online Gaming Ethics Committee decides whether or not the game corresponds to Chinese values.
- In February, the regulator suspended the acceptance of new applications for publication. Today, on April 22, he resumes this process in accordance with the new rules. At the same time, he continues to consider those applications that have been sent since August 2018.
- The number of games approved for publication will be limited. However, no specific figure was given. Niko Partners believes that about 5,000 licenses will be issued in 2019.
- The requirements for limiting the time that children and teenagers spend playing games are planned to be extended beyond mobile games — to PC.
- Mini-games and HTML5 projects will also have to go through the approval process before publication. Previously, this was not required.
- Publishers will be able to independently check their games for illegal content with the help of independent teams before sending them to the Ethics Committee.
- The regulator will give special preference to those games that promote Chinese traditional culture, but do not distort history.
Prohibited content
Chinese regulators are not going to give the go-ahead for the publication:
- low-quality clones;
- poker and mahjong games;
- projects where there are dead bodies and blood (it is also forbidden to repaint blood in other colors);
- products where there are “obscene topics” (talking about erotic or, apparently, hinting at it content);
- games about life in a harem are also locked up. A funny story is connected with this. In China, the series “The Conquest of the Yanxi Palace” about the life of a concubine of one of the Chinese emperors is very popular. Accordingly, there are games about concubines. The problem is that the plot of the series strains the Chinese government, which believes that such a drama is a field for political metaphors, according to Niko Partners. So no concubine games.
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