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
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Oh, hey there. I was going to write similar post but found yours. So are we free to criticise chinese goverment on paradox forums? We need clear statement. Censorship or free speach here?
Just here to watch for their response with interest. Even if the response is through action or inaction, rather than a specific statement.
Also, does Tencent, as partial owner of Paradox, get access to the data Paradox gathers about its players?
Knee jerk response to OP was, "Please, let's not politicise our gaming here". Then realised, oh yeah, it would be the share holder that would initiate the political.
Any way, didn't Marx say, "Gamers of the World Unite !!!" #red-dead-marx for merch
Any way, didn't Marx say, "Gamers of the World Unite !!!" #red-dead-marx for merch
PDMA removed
Blizzard is facing serious retaliation because of an incident ("Free Hong Kong") and the National Basketball Association is basically being carpetbombed because of ONE tweet by ONE low-level employee of ONE franchise. It stands to reason that any company that has financial dealings with the Chinese government (which, by default, Tencent is, since no "free" enterprise actually exists in China) should be giving serious thought to what that means this morning.
If some gamer at PdxCon yells out "Free Hong Kong", will Paradox's 5% ownership partner flex their muscle?
Blizzard is facing serious retaliation because of an incident ("Free Hong Kong") and the National Basketball Association is basically being carpetbombed because of ONE tweet by ONE low-level employee of ONE franchise. It stands to reason that any company that has financial dealings with the Chinese government (which, by default, Tencent is, since no "free" enterprise actually exists in China) should be giving serious thought to what that means this morning.
If some gamer at PdxCon yells out "Free Hong Kong", will Paradox's 5% ownership partner flex their muscle?
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I do want to note that the NBA tweet was not by a low-level employee, it was by one of the NBA teams' General Managers. However, given what happened re Hearthstone, I think that your last question there is legitimate ...
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.
Discussion of these matters purely related to Paradox is allowable here, as long as it is civilised in tone.
Political discussion unrelated to Paradox as such belongs in the OT forum. Some posts deleted accordingly.
Political discussion unrelated to Paradox as such belongs in the OT forum. Some posts deleted accordingly.
I would also like to add that we already have a thread for discussing the purely political sides of this on the OT forum and it has been up for months - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/protests-in-hong-kong.1189175/
Please feel free to join the discussion there, ot does need some new blood
Please feel free to join the discussion there, ot does need some new blood
There are many ways in which it could happen.
I think a statement from PDX saying that they won't censor people for saying they support Hong Kong would be helpful.
5% ownership of Paradox gives Tencent little to no control over their actions. Its not even close to a controlling share.
Besides, Riot is 100% owned by TC and they haven't censored League folks on this matter afaik.
Blizzard didn't make this decision because of Chinese ownership, only to protect their profits from China- which Paradox doesn't really have. HoI4 is already banned there for political reasons.
Besides, Riot is 100% owned by TC and they haven't censored League folks on this matter afaik.
Blizzard didn't make this decision because of Chinese ownership, only to protect their profits from China- which Paradox doesn't really have. HoI4 is already banned there for political reasons.
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.
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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.
Yeah, my bad I think it was HOI3 that was banned.
Well, 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:
Only HOI4 was gone.
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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.
However, in government structure of China, they have no rights to ban anything. Even they are in the "reddest"/"leftest" faction in party, they are officially just a media, having no functionality of governing.
Thus, after HOI4 was removed from Steam. Players went to ask government about "banning". (This time we are angry.
)And government didn't acknowledge this "banning".After HOI4 was removed from Steam, it appears everybody just forgot the rest 3 HOI games(and their DLCs/bundles). Maybe, People's Daily considers their job is completed or...they were stopped.
Anyway, life gets back to normal (except HOI4 was not sold on Steam in China any more.)
People make HOI4 videos/streaming
https://search.bilibili.com/all?keyword=钢铁雄心4&from_source=banner_search
Have discussions of it
https://tieba.baidu.com/f?kw=%B8%D6%CC%FA%D0%DB%D0%C44&fr=ala0&tpl=5
Totally like no signs of ban at all.
We have a big community(thanks to our population). But, maybe because of culture and Great Firewall reasons, players of China usually just stick among ourselves, rarely come out of local internet.
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Was. Evidently it's back in disguise
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/5641/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Mobilization_Pack/