Kliuless? #9: China's Gaming Cold War Continues

"Two executives said the government may borrow from its regulation of the movie industry and impose an annual quota on the number of foreign-made games.

Before the shuffle, a review committee under the Ministry of Culture had become nitpicky about foreign games, said the former game-company executive. While that committee used to focus its objections on violence, nudity or political issues, it started requiring tweaks on minor issues, including changing visual effects such as 'boom' and 'You win!' into simplified Chinese, the executive said, prompting his company to retack.

'We stopped pushing as many Western games in the last year or so,' he said. 'Once you sense something like this, you can’t fight it.'"

"China’s regulators have ended the issuance of game licenses through a stopgap approval process[,] closing the last known official path for making money from new titles in the world’s biggest gaming market"

"China gamers have also flocked to Steam, an online platform where people can play unlicensed titles. The site [...] has so far escaped the government crackdown. Its games are now available via overseas servers, but it’s unclear if that will continue once Steam begins using local servers as the China government requires.

Game accounts that do not pass the check will be forbidden from logging in

Each real ID can have a maximum of one game account on WeChat and QQ each 

HoK-specific restrictions:

Beginning in the Beijing area at first, Tencent plans to roll this out for HoK nationwide, and then eventually for other games as well

Related: The making of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2