
Games and live streaming suspended in China for day of mourning
China’s Tomb-Sweeping Day was turned into a day of mourning for coronavirus victims, with online entertainment shut down
Anyone who awoke in China on Saturday hoping to relax on their day off by playing a few rounds of games like Honor of Kings or Game for Peace would have been disappointed. All of the country's biggest games were shut down for the day.
Why PUBG Mobile became Game for Peace in China

And non-gamers didn’t fare much better. The country's biggest video streaming sites stopped updating shows for the day and made their websites black and white. Tencent Video, Baidu's iQiyi and Alibaba's Youku all participated.
How Youku went from being China’s YouTube to China’s Hulu
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)
How Douyu won the live-streaming war to become China’s Twitch
Shoppers could still buy things online as ecommerce sites Taobao, owned by Alibaba, and JD.com continued operations. But the platforms also participated by making their sites black and white.
The six people are all under 25 years old, and four of them are students, the youngest being 16 years old, according to police. Police said the people’s comments “hurt the feelings of the public and caused adverse effects.” The police didn’t say how these six were “dealt with.”

The most-upvoted posts are in favor of the suspensions. But some people also said that shutting down servers was irrelevant because it wouldn’t make people mourn Covid-19 victims if they didn’t want to.
Some internet users also tried to remind people to be wary about the official campaign. “Holding people accountable is the right way to mourn,” said one Weibo user in a post that received more than 28,000 likes. But much like people’s favorite games on Saturday, the post is now nowhere to be found.
Sign up now and get a 10% discount (original price US$400) off the China AI Report 2020 by SCMP Research. Learn about the AI ambitions of Alibaba, Baidu & JD.com through our in-depth case studies, and explore new applications of AI across industries. The report also includes exclusive access to webinars to interact with C-level executives from leading China AI companies (via live Q&A sessions). Offer valid until 31 May 2020.
