General Game Chat

[Dragon Lord]

So a few weeks ago, China made it so that people under the age of 18 were only allowed to play one hour of online video games during weekends or Holidays. Now, they've put an indefinite ban on online video games altogether.

Seeing as China is the largest market for such games, this is sure to be a huge blow to a lot of companies. Overwatch 2 in particular is an upcoming game that I can see being hugely effected by this, which is pretty hilarious seeing as Blizzard as been letting China bend them over the table for years to gain their favor. Guess bootlicking China didn't work out too well, eh Blizzard?

[ShiraNoMai]

Oh wow, didn't see about the online ban. Source?

That's crazy. China really has been dishing out these terrible media-censorship centered laws and I don't think they realize how much of this is going to back fire on them.

[Maniakkid25]

Yeah, no, this has been a thing for, like a month, so here's just one random news article. https://www.dexerto.com/league-of-legend...42520/?amp

[ShiraNoMai]

No I know about the under 18 video game time limit, I didn't realize that included a full indefinite ban on online games outright, time restriction be damned.

[Maniakkid25]

Apologies; didn't know if you were saying about the restriction or the outright ban. Right now, the wording I'm seeing is "NEW video games" being banned, but this is China; anything is possible. https://m.slashdot.org/story/390117

[Dragon Lord]

Yes, China has been slowly putting a strangle hold on the time that minors can spend on online games, recently reducing it to just one hour a night, only on weekends and holidays.

As for what exactly is going on this time, it doesn't seem like anyone knows for sure quite yet. Every article says "Video game ban" in the title, but then proceeds to say "online games ban" in the article itself. Which is why I posted that it was for online games. No clarification yet on whether or not this will effect single-player, offline games or not.

But seeing as China tends to be the largest market for any and every online multiplayer/competitive game, this is going to be a huge blow to a lot of companies. It'll also be interesting to see how this progresses and if developers of gacha games (Genshin Impact being the biggest exampe) hightail it out of the country due to the ban. Though I can't imagine this will effect their dealings with Japanese and English versions of their games. Of course, Genshin being an existing game already, doesn't fall under this at the moment.

However, it will be interesting to see how long it takes the CCP to eventually reach even further and put a ban on existing games as well. It's probably only a matter of time, since apparently video games make their citizens too happy.

[Moonface]

I saw the limitation part, but the online ban is news to me too. I thought China was more for online gaming than offline but maybe I'm recalling it wrong.

[ShiraNoMai]

Well, CCP has been trying to homogenize their citizens to their ideal form, so anything that could possibly stray their citizens from that is considered bad. Online has large influence on the youth so, there ya go lol

It's just crazy to me that they'll actually forgo profits in favor of this. I'm so used to capitalistic countries going the monetary route, but I suppose under the CCP, they have different priorities.

[Dragon Lord]

From what little I understand of how things are in China (and most of this is coming from what little I've read online, so I'm not even remotely close to saying this is 100% fact), the CCP prefers that their citizens dedicate their entire lives from birth to death, and every day from dawn to dusk, to doing whatever the CCP wishes for them to do.

I imagine the big problem for them is that online gaming is giving their youth access to views outside of China, and they don't like that. On top of that, obviously if the youth are spending all of their time gaming, they're not learning how to best dedicate their lives to serving the CCP's needs. Basically it comes down to the fact that video games are making it harder for the CCP to brainwash the youth, and that's the last thing they want.

As for giving up the profits, it probably doesn't hurt them as much now since they seem to have come to an alliance with the new Taliban "government" of Afghanistan, and that gives them access to tap into trillions of dollars in natural resources in that country (which I'm sure the Taliban are willing to give up in exchange for China's protection). Not intending to get into anything political in this topic, just pointing out that China has a new pathway to a lot of money, so perhaps that factors into their decision to just cut off the video game scene altogether.

Obviously we all know the CCP is a terrible government. They are willing to brutalize or even kill anyone living in China who dares speak poorly of the CCP. I think this is just another sign of just how much they want to control their people and make sure they are spend their entire lives doing nothing but giving to the CCP for nothing in return. Like I said at the start of my post, I'm no expert on the matter, but no matter what you research on the CCP, there is always one common theme -- The last thing they want is for their citizens to have free thought.

Hopefully this doesn't end up affecting gaming in the rest of the world too much. Obviously it'll have ripple effects in the fact that it's going to hit the profits of many companies. It'll be interesting to see what developers of Chinese gacha games end up doing. Like I said before, ones that exist already are safe for now, but obviously if the CCP are willing to do these kind of power grabs, it's only a matter of time before they start banning existing games. I also have to wonder how this is going to effect the game developers that Chinese companies have taken a majority stake in. I know Marvelous (Japanese developer) had a majority of their shares bought out by a Chinese company (can't remember if it was Tencent or another one though). Could possibly see some issues arise in those companies with this move as well.

Again, sorry for dipping into politics a bit here. Hard to explain everything going on with this without talking about the little bit we know of the political landscape in China a little bit.

[Moonface]

As well as what you said DL, I think that the CCP isn't going to want people playing games over working on things that China exports. Whatever money online gaming makes in China doesn't really make China wealthier because the money is being spent in the country, on the country. Exports make China money from outside the country, and that's going to matter more to the CCP than internal revenue because one creates growth and power.


As something to go alongside this for anyone with nothing to say about the game ban or whatever, has anyone else ever seen an IP handled so poorly and tone deaf that it becomes almost an insult? I just saw a trailer for what I expected to be an awesome new WipEout game, and what is it? A mobile game that seems to be putting an emphasis on card based gameplay yet WipEout is a racing game. It's bad enough when Sony closed down the studio who did WipEout, but to come out with this is just shitting all over it.

[ShiraNoMai]

Nintendo Direct 09.22.2021 Announced:



Tune in 9/23 at 3 p.m. PT (6 p.m. ET | 11 p.m. BST) for a Nintendo Direct livestream featuring roughly 40 minutes of information focused mainly on Nintendo Switch games launching this winter.

Any COPIUM predictions? Any realistic predictions?

[Moonface]

This is what I expect to be in the Direct as obvious inclusions because they all have dates for this year:

• Shin Megami Tensei V
  
• Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl
  
• Mario Party Superstars
  
• Metroid Dread
  
• Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp
  

Pokemon Legends Arceus could show up because it is a January 2022 release, and that month still falls into Winter but I could understand the game being held off for its own Direct closer to launch.

The last Smash character could be in here, but it could also be saved for The Game Awards since Sakurai said it would be a while before we see the last one, and the time frame between reveals has been about three months, and it was that long since we saw Kazuya so a while would be longer than three months. If it does show today, I have no idea who it would be. Possibly Crash just on the basis that Wumpa League is still not announced and maybe that game will be announced today, and saving it for this Direct instead of the recent PlayStation Showcase would only make sense if Crash is involved in something else like Smash.

Any other games I could toss out don't seem like they'd be out until at least Spring 2022, so I'm not sure what else would be in the Direct but there has to be more than what I've put up because that stuff isn't going to make up 40 minutes, especially when Mario Party, Pokemon, and Metroid are all just going to probably get new trailers that are like a minute or two long. SMTV is probably the only game that'll get some good airtime out of the list I made because we haven't seen much of it since E3 I think?

[Mr EliteL]

Ahh what 11PM? Frick I probably can't watch that, a bit too late for me, why couldn't it be 9PM or 10PM? >.<

Kinda hope there isn't the last fighter for Ultimate just yet but if it appears then so be it. The list of what Moony mentioned are what I'd guess could be included too, definitely Metroid Dread and SMT V. Perhaps one brand new game announcement to blow everyone away in case Smash isn't included? ...or remake...

[Moonface]

There has been one new game leaked due to Nintendo accidentally publishing its website early.

It's a new Kirby game that I don't remember the name of and I can't check right now.

[Moonface]

I wasn't sure whether to make a thread for this (if it warrants I'll split this all out into a thread), but I'm guessing at least some of you here have heard about the massive Twitch leak that happened overnight: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news...en-leaked/

I haven't been able to determine yet if passwords were actually leaked in any way because I've seen claims for and against that event, and I also saw that 2FA codes may have also been in the leak which implies that those using 2FA are also not safe. But again, I can't find anything confirming it to be true, just more claims being tossed about.

I looked at the top 100 list of earners though, mostly from curiosity of how much people can actually make from Twitch (I know you can judge by subs but I don't know how much of a sub goes to the streamer), and it was interesting to see that one or two streamers I watch actually do get decent payouts from Twitch. Not that I thought they made shit money, just that for all I knew Twitch could be taking a considerable amount and causing streamers to not make the massive bank the leak shows they do. Sorta like how YouTube seems to not pay out very well unless you throw out so much stuff with hundreds of thousands of views instantly to offset the payments you get (although there is a difference since YouTube is mostly ad revenue).

It sucks that the leak had to happen at all and expose private earnings of streamers, and streamers can simply say they do well on the platform but I guess it's just nice to see that any support given to streamers isn't being leeched dry by Twitch and leaving streamers comfortable but not as well off as they could/should be when their subscribers and whatnot are taken into consideration.

The Steam competitor can go die in a fire though. Amazon is not a company I would want to see trying to mess with a market that I think has been doing fine under Steam and doesn't need splitting apart into more and more options. Especially not when just developing games for Amazon had sketchy requirements and limits, so who knows what they'd pull if they could start pulling an Epic and pulling third parties onto their platform and slapping shitty strings onto them.