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Josh Ye

This article originally appeared on ABACUS
When news broke that the world’s biggest game store was coming to China, Chinese gamers reacted… badly.
“Pow! And I spit out a mouthful of green blood,” one gamer said.
Why green blood? It’s because they fear the China-only version of Steam will have a very limited lineup of approved games, and the games that are there will be heavily censored -- hence, green blood, because red blood looks too violent.
It’s one of a number of changes that developers are forced to make if they want to officially release their games in China. Let’s run through them!
1) No gore, no blood!
Shooting games are huge. And this might sound really obvious, but shooting games are usually quite violent. I mean, what did you expect in a genre like battle royale where the objective is to kill the other 99 players?
How Fortnite and PUBG made battle royale the hottest trend in gaming    
But in China, don’t expect to see blood. Instead, you’ll see other things, like puffs of green smoke.

Well, beyond green blood, there’s also “oil blood”. In the Chinese version of CS:GO, characters bleed black blood, likened by Chinese gamers to crude oil. That’s also why the Chinese version of CS:GO has the nickname “Crude Oil Edition”.

2) No skulls and no skeletons
When China’s 15-year console ban was lifted in 2015, famed console game Final Fantasy XV was quick to release in the country.
Why the impact of China’s 15-year console ban still lingers today    
But the Final Fantasy XV China got isn’t quite the same as the Final Fantasy XV the rest of the world got. These enemies, for instance, had to be changed because China doesn’t allow skeletons.

World of Warcraft was the biggest game in China for about ten years from the mid 2000s to the mid 2010s. Yet the epic Western fantasy blockbuster known for fantasy staples like orcs and demons had no skulls or skeletons in China.
Instead, the undead are often turned into flesh-and-blood -- and quite buff -- thug-like characters.

Even the dragons couldn’t be spared by censors. The skeletal dragon became a blue and fat one in the Chinese version.

3) Hide your vices
A huge uproar broke out last month when Ubisoft’s popular shooter Rainbow Six Siege made graphical changes to the game around the world to help its expansion into “Asian territories”.
Besides removing skeletons, the game also tried to hide a strip club sign and some slot machines.

Ubisoft later walked back these changes after Western gamers complained -- arguing that they shouldn’t suffer from changes made to please one country.
4) Cover up!
If Chinese censors didn’t approve of an abstract neon drawing of a stripper… well, it’s probably not surprising to see they’d have a pretty strict dress code.
Yup, characters simply wear more clothes in the Chinese version of games than in their Western or Japanese equivalents. Take Final Fantasy XV’s Shiva, for instance; barely clothed in most editions of the game, in China she’s almost wholly covered in a weird blue outfit.

But it’s not just foreign games that are targeted. Domestic developers have to make changes too -- including the makers of China’s biggest game, Honor of Kings, known as Arena of Valor in the West.
Arena of Valor, China’s mobile League of Legends, is aiming to be the world’s go-to mobile esport    
The country’s most popular game features a guest character from the King of Fighters series, Mai, known for her, well, very large (and barely covered) chest. The Chinese version covers her up more, but let’s be real, it’s still plenty revealing.

Now of course, it’s worth noting that China isn’t the only country where games are censored. Take Mai again, for instance. The Western version of The King Of Fighters '94 removes some, um, movement from Mai’s chest. Look, I’m going a little red-faced just trying to say it, so just look at the GIF below to see what I mean.

But even where China seems to be following the global lead… it goes a little further. Take PUBG Mobile. It’s common for online games to ban profanity and racist slurs. A lot of the time, games won’t allow you to use those words at all -- trying to enter them in chat results in the words not appearing.
But in the Chinese version of PUBG mobile, it’s not just swear words that are banned. You can’t even type the word “Taiwan” or “Tibet” in chat -- the words turn into a string of asterisks.
Tencent wouldn’t confirm why they’ve banned those words, but it’s hardly unusual. And it shows the lengths that companies will go to make sure their games are suitable for China.
China is offering it citizens up to US$86,000 to snitch on porn

For more insights into China tech, sign up for our tech newsletters, subscribe to our Inside China Tech podcast, and download the comprehensive 2019 China Internet Report. Also roam China Tech City, an award-winning interactive digital map at our sister site Abacus.



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Censorship

No blood, no gambling: Four ways games are changed for China

No revealing gods for China. (Picture: Square Enix)

This change drew a bit of controversy among KoF fans back then (Picture: YouTube/Censored Gaming)

Mai covers up in Honor of Kings… well, she covers up a little. (Picture: WeChat)

Ubisoft said that these changes were made for "Asian territories". (Picture: Ubisoft)

Instead of looking like this menacing, dark creature, it looks like the blue-eyes white dragon from Yu-Gi-Oh. (Picture: Blizzard)

This gif is a flip from a tutorial online which teaches Chinese WoW fans how to restore the game back to its original form. (Picture: Bilibili)

China’s censors are very sensitive with skeletons. (Picture: Square Enix)

What is that black stuff? Crude oil is a pretty good analogy, I guess. (Picture: Bilibili)

Green blood was originally featured in PUBG and PUBG Mobile in China. But the global version now also has it as an option for gamers  (Picture: Gifs.com)

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Besides red blood, Chinese censors also hate skeletons, slot machines, and skimpy outfits. Check out our video to see all the extreme ways that games are being modified for China!


No blood, no gambling: Four ways games are changed for China

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}In China, blood is green… or black

1) No gore, no blood!

How Fortnite and PUBG made battle royale the hottest trend in gaming

In China, blood is green… or black