China to ban online gaming, chatting with foreigners outside Great Firewall

[E69_Qpassa_VR]

This is bad news, many potential clients, specially for the squad =GW=.

 

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — After blocking a popular Nintendo game "Animal Crossing," the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is taking its political censorship to the extreme by disconnecting Chinese online gamers from their guildmates outside China.

On April 10, China banned the popular social simulation video game in which gamers can create a home and interact with cute animal villagers, owing to Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) revealing a customized scene in the game which reads "Free Hong Kong" and mocks Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Several other players were also found leveraging the game to vent their discontent with the CCP and making satirical content related to the CCP's failure to tackle the virus.

The communist regime is said to have noticed an authority vacuum in online multiplayer games, which enables people to freely socialize without monitoring. Local metropolises are scrambling to draft laws to expand the scope of online censorship in video games and even prohibit gamers from meeting and chatting with people on the other side of the Great Firewall, according to LTN, which cited news from a Chinese gaming forum.

One-player online games will also be subject to surveillance, as a new real-name mechanism is going to be implemented in China. Also, the new law will not allow for zombies and plagues, map editing, roleplaying, as well as organizing a union in games — regulations which are believed to be inspired by the sensitive content made by Joshua Wong.

As the CCP's audacious global propaganda campaign to silence critics abroad and to defend its infallibility fails to work out, the new law is expected to block Chinese people from learning how the world is reacting to Beijing's handling of the outbreak and subsequent cover-ups.

Other rules under the new law are less political. They include an online gaming curfew (10 p.m. to 8 a.m.) for gamers aged under 18 and a maximum amount of money they are allowed to spend on games to combat internet addiction.

 

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3916690

Edited April 15, 2020 by E69_Qpassa_VR

[Feathered_IV]

My feelings are rather complicated at the moment.  

[AndyJWest]

Two things I rarely take at face value:

 

1. Statements by the Chinese 'Communist'  Party.

2. Statements about the Chinese Communist Party coming from Taiwanese tabloid sources. Taiwan News was the original source for a series of doctored images purporting to show a COVID-19 mortality rate of 16% (the real figure is probably closer to 1 or 2%). Best taken with a pinch of salt. Through a facemask...

 

I don't think that there is much room for debate over the fact that the CCP has been trying to extend censorship over the internet. What also isn't open to debate, in my opinion, is that they have only had limited effect through their efforts. Chinese capitalism (which is what the CCP now exists to promote, despite its name) is entirely dependant on international trade, and it simply can't function without a level of connectivity to the outside world not compatible with the level of censorship they might desire. If Chinese citizens have been using Animal Crossing to take the piss out of their glorious leaders, said glorious leaders are obliged to make a noise about it, and in doing so may discourage their citizens from using that particular outlet for their commentary. I'm sure they'll find another way though, given the enthusiasm amongst the ordinary Chinese for mocking their leaders. If they can turn Winnie the Pooh into satire, they aren't going to be defeated by surveillance of their comments on  Animal Crossing.

Edited April 15, 2020 by AndyJWest

[Oyster_KAI]

Acually, they can't play more and more games ex. "Plague Inc: Evolved" etc... same as movies, animations, newspaper, books......
there is impossible to block all contact to world internet, lot of their people is used to flipping the wall everyday, if CCP push this policy harder than before, someday the riot will come.