Many publishers will now be very hard to sell games with the age category of "17+" in the Middle Kingdom: the Chinese government has adopted a set of bills that strictly regulate what can and cannot be shown in computer games.
The demonstration of murder, blood, dispersed entrails was already banned in the country; zombies and skeletons fell under the taboo, as they were “an ancestral insult”. Since China is simply a huge market for venerable publishers, all these crazy bans were handled by various tricks - the blood was replaced with a multi-colored liquid, and the living dead and skeletons were replaced by other monsters.
Now, China has gone even further and has forbidden even showing imitation of blood in games, so that from now on developers will not be able to dodge and force the wounded characters to expire with chocolate syrup and jam. In addition to this, it is forbidden to use the word “kill” in games - it cannot be printed on the covers and used in the game itself, regardless of the context.
Although China seems to have become more loyal to some Western games, the country's Ministry of Education continues to insist on imposing additional controls and bans.
The Chinese bureaucratic machine works phenomenally fast: the adopted laws have already entered into force and concern even those games that were previously licensed.
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