The Regulated Reality of China's Gaming Industry

It’s not uncommon for games to be localised, especially when moving between the Eastern and Western worlds. Of course there is the case of differing languages, but there are also many more innocuous elements that can become lost in translation that need adaptation or which must be altered to respect certain customs or laws. These changes are usually relatively minor, such as the removal of hate symbols and gore¹ or the replacement of a reference that might not be understood elsewhere.

However, China takes localisation to a whole different level entirely. The country’s regulation and censorship have created what feels at a glance, and even at further inspection, like an alternate universe. So much is similar to what is known by the rest of the world, and yet so much is different.

Regulation

Gaming in China is heavily regulated and has been subject to much government oversight since inception. Given the pervasiveness of online games, crucial to understanding the form China’s gaming industry has taken is understanding China’s almost self-contained national web. Within the country, there are a few companies that handle major games. Most notably Tencent and NetEase.

Tencent is one of the world’s largest companies by revenue and notably operates QQ and WeChat. That is just the very tip of the iceberg, however, as Tencent is among the largest video game vendors. They wholly own Riot Games, Turtle Rock Studios, Sumo Group, and more. They also have majority stakes in Supercell, Grinding Gear Games, and more. They also have minority but sizeable stakes in a plethora of major players, including Epic Games, Ubisoft, Remedy Entertainment, Fatshark, Roblox Corp, and FromSoftware. Further, they’ve got multiple in-house studios.

NetEase is also massive, though not quite to the scale of Tencent. It develops games including Marvel Rivals and has investments in Bungie, Devolver Digital, and others. Especially during the 2020s, many other Chinese brands have gained a footing in the market and begun to see massive growth, such as miHoYo, which publishes globally via Cognosphere trading as HoYoverse.

Regarding hardware, in 2000 a ban was enacted on imported game consoles, leading to variants and partnerships such as Nintendo consoles branded under ‘iQue’². This ban caused damage to the home console market in China and a flourishing of the PC and later mobile gaming markets. Though the ban was lifted in 2015, consoles still remain relatively unpopular, never having gotten a chance for a solid foothold during the market’s formative years. Following the iQue, Nintendo partnered with Tencent to distribute the Nintendo Switch in China, and while handheld consoles like the Switch have seen some popularity, they still don’t rival PC and mobile.

Elsewhere in the world, the vast majority of games released are released to a global audience in more or less the same state that they are in their country of origin. China, however, has extremely different versions of many games. There are periodic freezes on game approvals, preventing them from being published in the country. Notably from 2018 to 2019 and a significant slowdown through the early 2020s, though approvals have been more common since.

Games are expected to adhere to specific values and avoid allowing some immoral or unethical actions, which leads to them sometimes requiring alteration for distribution in China. The National Press and Publication Administration (国家新闻出版署Guójiā Xīnwén Chūbǎnshǔ) is currently the primary force behind this and has a few stipulations against content which:

• Spreads superstition or is deemed too horrific or cruel. This particularly applies to corpses, skeletons and blood, which are often removed, replaced, or recoloured. Cult or occult content that conflicts with state ideology is also restricted. In some cases developers go further than what is necessitated, just to ensure there are no complications due to found infractions.

• Falls outside of traditional gender roles and depictions of non-heterosexual marriage. Depictions of effeminate men are specifically targeted, and relationships are often recontextualised as friendships or removed entirely to ensure compliance.

• Depicts historical revisionism, such as games which depict alternate timelines where China is divided or Axis powers win during World War II. Maps which fail to align with China’s official borders are also noted.

• Includes gambling mechanics, which are very much regulated. Exact drop rates and likelihoods were made required to be published in 2017. This has had especially significant effects on games like Counter-Strike which have lootboxes.

Due to the heavy region-locking and the language barrier, many Chinese variants of games are scarcely accessible, or even known of, outside of China. Chinese variants of games commonly can’t be legitimately accessed at all outside of mainland China. You often need to provide state-issued ID to gain access, which allows enforcement of the aforementioned restrictions.

This requirement of state-issued ID is largely relevant to age gating. Throughout the late 2010s and 2020s, heavier restrictions began to be imposed, primarily to avoid gaming addiction. Strict playtime limits were enacted for minors, with them only being able to play them at certain times on certain days for limited periods. A black market of rental adult accounts sprung up as a result. In 2021, to ensure compliance, Tencent launched ‘Midnight Patrol’, a system which uses facial detection and algorithmic processing of player behaviour to detect underage players using other people’s accounts, such as their parents, to circumvent playtime restrictions.

Chinese Variants

Many popular games have significantly altered China-specific variants, including:

• Minecraft’s Chinese variant is My World: China Edition (我wǒ的de世shì界jiè. It is free-to-play with many micro-transactions and subscriptions. In addition to all that one would typically expect from Minecraft, it also has full additional gamemodes and takes cues from role-playing games. The mobile version even included a virtual house builder for a time, as you might see in a mobile match-three puzzle game.

• Plants vs Zombies 2 was first developed by PopCap’s Shanghai studio and then later by Talkweb Games. It is notable for having a huge amount of exclusive content, including extra worlds, plants, and game systems.

• Game for Peace/Peacekeeper Elite is Tencent’s version of PUBG. There are reductions in violence such as players not dying when eliminated, instead just waving goodbye.

• LuoBuLeSi was China’s version of Roblox that only operated for a few months in 2021, launching in July and closing in December, likely due to the open-ended nature, with user-generated content being deemed too difficult to moderate. The playtime limits for minors also likely had severe impact on Roblox’s ability to reach its primary demographic. At the time of publication, it has been confirmed to be returning in 2026.

This is just a small selection, for these are just some of the cases of games having Chinese variants that I find more interesting. Almost every game that is made available within China sees some degree of change to comply with regulations, even if that is just tweaking a few icons.

There is also extraterritorial censorship which impacts global titles. Marvel Rivals proved itself popular but is developed by NetEase. As such, certain phrases have been censored from the in-game chat. Genshin Impact, which is developed by miHoYo, also faced significant backlash from Western players when it was discovered various terms were censored in chat. Ubisoft made an attempt to censor the global version of Rainbow Six Siege via graphical changes, including removing slot machines from maps and redesigning icons to remove skulls. Following player backlash, they reverted the changes. When Black Myth: Wukong launched, influential streamers covering the game were given a list of topics to avoid. There are many more cases.

Many cases exist of games being banned or restricted due to their display and portrayal of subjects sensitive to the government. The Ministry of Culture banned Hearts of Iron for ‘distorting history and damaging China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity’. The game’s depiction of Manchuria, West Xinjiang, and Tibet as sovereign nations likely also had impact on this decision. Battlefield 4 was also banned in China due primarily to an expansion pack titled ‘China Rising’. The launch of Diablo Immortal was delayed after the game’s Sina Weibo account published a post widely interpreted as a jab at Xi Jingping.

Mobile Games

There is also a huge market for mobile games. Within China, many mobile games are not distributed as standard, self-contained applications installed on the operating system but are instead distributed within applications like WeChat. For example, the aforementioned Chinese version of Plants vs Zombies 2 is supported by a great number of Mini Programs.

Due to the distribution method, games also commonly have significant social integrations. It is easy to consider a game’s integration with WeChat the same as a game might integrate with Facebook, but they are different beasts entirely. Games are often deeply integrated into social identities, with tie-ins to leaderboards and in-app purchases directly through those services.

The growing capabilities of mobile devices have also had the same effect as they’ve had globally, with many more ambitious and technically demanding games reaching phones. Honor of Kings and other more complex mobile games see great successes.

Grey Market

Regardless of regulation, much global gaming content and many services that aren’t strictly forbidden, but also aren’t strictly allowed, exist within the country. They operate in an odd state, possibly by virtue of the government turning a blind eye to it so the industry can strengthen.

The global version of Valve’s game distribution powerhouse Steam operates to a degree within China. It is blocked intermittently, sometimes just in part, but is often available. The exact state of the service’s accessibility from within China varies frequently, with especially the Steam Community portion of the site being blocked. In 2021, Steam China launched, which adheres to China’s requirements but has a much smaller catalogue of games and lacks many features present in the global version.

Many people use VPNs to be able to access external gaming content, and a lot of people use game boosters (加速器jiāshùqì), which are popular for improving performance of connections to overseas servers. The Great Firewall and poor international routing make them borderline mandatory for interacting with a global player base.

Internet Cafés

In China, and indeed throughout much of Asia, internet cafés have retained a degree of relevancy. There has been a decline similar to the one seen globally during the 2010s with the increased popularity of smartphones and reductions of mobile data costs, but not nearly as drastic. Wangba, as they’re known, are still extremely popular. So popular that they’re actively growing.

They serve as cost-effective ways to play games conveniently on powerful computers which people may otherwise be unable to afford. Internet cafés also play directly into China’s massive e-sports culture. e-sports is much bigger than it is in the West. Titles including League of Legends and CrossFire (a Korean FPS massive in China) are extremely popular in part because of internet cafés. It is a symbiotic relationship of sorts.

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Despite all the restrictions, China’s gaming industry is the world’s largest video gaming market by sales and is only positioned to get bigger. In 2024, China’s first AAA game, Black Myth: Wukong, made its release to a solid critical and public reception. There is even suggestion that the game’s success might trigger further investment in the space. Part of this is also China’s opportunity for cultural export, with games being seen as an opportunity to distribute the aforementioned censorship and content regulations to overseas audiences. Video games are proving a valuable export with clear economic incentive, and with government support China’s video game industry seems positioned to see huge investments and expand a great deal further on a global scale.

Footnotes

1. Notably, Germany previously had restrictions on the display of Nazi insignias and violence in media, which led to alternations of games when published in Germany. For example, in Team Fortress 2, bloody giblets were replaced with silly variants. ↩

2. The first iQue product, the iQue Player, was a redesign of the Nintendo 64 as a handheld TV game to circumvent the bans. ↩