Most games nowadays are made, or have versions that allow for Chinese gamers. With a population of over one billion and most of their youth are gamers, it's very hard to find a good reason NOT to cater to the Chinese.
Also, five cents is one of the literal translations in Chinese not accounting for all the other different accented ways to interpret that.
I think a lot of games do NOT have versions that suit PRChina state censors.
It was tough on PUBG. Korean-developed PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was not officially released in China because it was deemed too violent, so n 2017, Tencent partnered with the devs, promising to ensure that the game accorded “with socialist core values, Chinese traditional culture and moral rules”. That more (rather than less) required creating a completely new game. Peacekeeper Elite, with no blood and no death – when a player was eliminated, they simply kneeled and waved goodbye before vanishing.
That's the kind of thing Star Vault would be up against. And the result wouldn't be a game that could be played on that Single Server with the rest of us.
China tolerates a grey market in which players can buy foreign games that haven’t been approved for domestic consumption by using Steam, but even that is changing. Fairly recently, an “official” Chinese version of Steam was launched, with just a few dozen games. If China were to restrict access to the global version, it would drive many more developers into the censorship process, or else risk losing millions in sales.
In China, to create a video game account in Tentcent
it IS required to show a government identification to verify the real name and age of the users, among other information. Sounds good, if you're into that. So does minors affected by the new rules not being able to simply create another account, pretending to be adults, to bypass the restrictions.
Which are, for everyone under 18:
- Only between 8 pm and 9 pm,
- on Fridays, Saturadays, and Sundays--
- a total of three hours a week,
- unless theré's a public holiday, on which they can add an extra hour to the allotted single hour.
But, that only keeps the young'ns out of the game, which some would think was a good thing. Unless...
Well, according to the Chinese People's Daily, as soon as those restrictions went into effect, more than twenty commercial platforms began to rent adult-owned video game accounts for prices starting at $ 5 for two hours. That's illegal, of course, but it goes on anyway. For now.
But what can't you put in your video game, if it's localised for China?
no skulls lying about, no depictions of skulls or bones on anything. No walkers. No inaminate skeletons, either.
- No video game can show characters emerging from the ground, as if rising from the dead.
Some games have gotten by with replacing blood splatter with pink splatter, but... generally...
- No gore. No realistic looking blood. No
- No nudity.
- (And with those two prohibitions you lose the way that avatars resurrect in front of a Priest.)
Probably, no Priests, either; media that “promotes cults and feudal superstitions”. is barred. (Not just in games.)
- No Church of Soldeus.
- No Hodor.
- No Zealots (..."and there was much rejoicing").
No politically contentious messages, which might easily apply to Factions like the Exuul.
No gambling. Heh, "no dice", I guess.
NO DRUGS. Goodbye, Nahuat, Salvia, that stuff that those guys in Tindrem with the "tiny addictions" used to crave that you could smuggle in, and some Mushrooms.
No depictions of organised crime, which makes the entire existence of the Guttershipes (for instance) in the same game as the upright Chinese gamer impossible-- and also that NPC guy that you sold the Somniferum to.
- And Bribery and 'Connections' and Pilfering and Lock Picking. /wave
- No depictions that “endanger social morality"; for instance, a work was once banned for dpeicing interracial sex. No sexual themes at all, really.
- Bye, origins of the Thursar.
No endarngeing national cultural traditions; for instance, the censors streas the importance of not mixing styles of dress from across Asia, which can be confusing, offensive or simply ridiculous to a Chinese audience. They might flip over the whole Khurite culture and the architecture of Morin Khur. given their inspiration-- hard to say.
Game makers have been advised that the solid citizens of the People's Republic of China don’t really love grotesque monsters, goblins and ogres (like the Trolls); they like the pretty, young, more anime style.
Because the official guidelines are so vague, foreign developers tend to abide by a fuzzy, speculative and ever-changing set of unwritten “rules”, many of which are gleaned from trial and error.
- Time travel, for example, is considered best avoided. WTF?
Games that fail three times to pass the byzantine review process – which includes submitting videos, screenshots and often tens of thousands of words explaining what the game is
– may be permanently blocked.
Now, I'm sure
@Henrik Nyström would be fine with Star Vault trying to make Mortal Online 2 saleable to Chinese gamers as customers
... I just don't think they
can.