Since companies funded by Tencent (looking at you Blizzard) seem to support the Chinese goverment‘s brutal actions against HK civilians it is the only right thing to do. #freeHK
If some gamer at PdxCon yells out "Free Hong Kong", will Paradox's 5% ownership partner flex their muscle?
Because of holding 5% of their shares?.... No?
AFAIK Activision Blizzard / the NBA aren't in their position because of having their shares held by Chinese companies. But I have only had a cursory look, correct me if Blizzard's top share-holders are all part-owned by Chinese companies or something.
Their bowing to pressure from China would be solely to protect their profits in China or otherwise affected by Chinese retaliatory measures (e.g. if they threatened to stop doing business with another overseas company unless they stopped doing business with you first). Any company, regardless of ownership structure, would face the same decision: to go into business in China and thus with their government, or.... not.
Riot did censor League of Legend in their China special version(maybe in other countries' version too) in the following areas:Besides, Riot is 100% owned by TC and they haven't censored League folks on this matter afaik.
Nope, the government denies it when players in China demanded in "government information publicity" process. Government claims there was no government order of banning. Thus, it's widely considered as Valve's self censorship in China. (Valve is known to remove lots of game in their China regional stores against developers/publishers' will, I can give you a long list of that if you want. But, it is understandable. China may block Steam via Great Firewall otherwise, just like Google/Facebook/Reddit/Discord are blocked by it. Gabe is doing self censorship to avoid that.)HoI4 is already banned there for political
I can confirm Tencent has access to some data of Paradox games.......that are sold on Tencent's WeGame store. But, that's mostly because they are the store, not because they are the shareholder.Also, does Tencent, as partial owner of Paradox, get access to the data Paradox gathers about its players?
This is a discussion of censorship outside of China, by China (or people trying to curry favour with China). Obviously riot censors the chinese version of league, basically everything that's china-exclusive is censored.Riot did censor League of Legend in their China special version(maybe in other countries' version too) in the following areas:
1, All blood are black in game. (Vladmir players shall be pissed. His nick name is "oil vampire" in China.)
2, Specific lines of champions voice over are changed to avoid political problems.
3, Lots of words are censored in chat. Not words like those F words, but also "Hong Kong", "Xi", "Jin", "Ping" (any single word that included in the chairman's name)
4, A detection system was added just a few months ago to find out "illegal speeches" in game which will result an auto-ban of account permanently. Along side with an announcement made by Riot and Tencent claiming there will be no tolerance to any of "illegal speeches".
I personally protested point 1 and point 2 in Riot's HK office to one of their producers many years ago during a private meeting, a few months before their team went Shenzhen to meet with Tencent's operational team.
Nope, the government denies it when players in China demanded in "government information publicity" process. Government claims there was no government order of banning. Thus, it's widely considered as Valve's self censorship in China. (Valve is known to remove lots of game in their China regional stores against developers/publishers' will, I can give you a long list of that if you want. But, it is understandable. China may block Steam via Great Firewall otherwise, just like Google/Facebook/Reddit/Discord are blocked by it. Gabe is doing self censorship to avoid that.)
As a result, people are still legally buying HOI4 today. Just not from Steam any more.
If it is a ban, all players in China are criminals. And I am one of them.
But, as it is proved not a ban, at least not from government officially. Nobody can put players in China in prosecution.
I can confirm Tencent has access to some data of Paradox games.......that are sold on Tencent's WeGame store. But, that's mostly because they are the store, not because they are the shareholder.
Business laws may be different in the world, but I think they may also access to Paradox's financial related reports which may involve some other data Paradox gathers such as sells.
Well, HOI3 is not even self-censored by Valve on Steam.it was HOI3 that was banned.
That's what I get for taking my news from reddit, then, eh? According to china daily they banned the first HoI but obviously that's not exactly a cash cow for ParadoxWell, HOI3 is not even self-censored by Valve on Steam.
I think the source of "ban" may from People's Daily.
Many years ago People's Daily publicly denounced HOI games in general. As they are the top tier government run media, it is quite easy to confuse their comments with government order. (And indeed they are not just a news paper or a website, they hold political powers. )
Thus, it is considered an unofficial channel to send out message to foreign companies to make demands of the government.
Apple removed all VPN apps/pro-HK apps in their app store in China as People's Daily made news reports telling them "Chinese people are angry" (Nope, at least not all of us. )
I think the case to HOI4 was the same. People's Daily makes a report saying "HOI is bad! Chinese people are angry of its existence!".(Again, we are not. WE LOVE HOI4! ) Then, Valve saw it (maybe forward by their Perfect World partner ). And thus, they removed HOI4 from store. As editors of People's Daily are not HOI experts, removing HOI4 alone(even without remove any DLCs of it) may be enough to let them think all HOI games are removed on Steam. Thus, it was settled.
Here is the search result of "Hearts of Iron" in Steam's China region store:
View attachment 517872
Only HOI4 was gone.
Not just the first HOI, they intended to remove all HOI games from the first to fourth.According to china daily they banned the first HoI
Was. Evidently it's back in disguiseOnly HOI4 was gone.