China censorship extends overseas, Taiwan game “Payback” was taken down

Last week, Taiwan-based game operator Red Candle Games’ horror game Devotion was canceled from the international gaming platform GOG.com due to complaints from many Chinese netizens. This is not the first time that the Red Candle team has been subjected to such a situation. When China’s content censorship extends to international platforms, what should content creators in Taiwan and around the world do about it?

Return the Wish was boycotted by Chinese netizens because of the game’s “Winnie the Pooh spell” design, which insinuates Chinese President Xi Jinping. In February last year, the Red Candle team issued an apology, stating that the design on the spell was not the position of the Red Candle team, nor was it the intention of the game, and that the team then removed the game from the Steam online game platform in China.

Even though the team has made corrections to the art materials in the game “Return the Wish”, but when the game was ready to be put on the shelves again in December this year, but still could not stop the Chinese netizens’ public opinion criticism. efforts.”

Industry sources believe that China’s censorship of content is not only for film and video games entering the Chinese market, but even game platforms such as GOG, which hopes to continue operating in the local market, are not immune to the “unspeakable” pressure.

Tsai Jiajun, former CEO of the game software company and current chairman of the Taiwan New Media and Video Sound Development Association, said in an interview with the Voice of America: “The platform itself, if it wants to enter the Chinese market, it is afraid of offending the Chinese, it will not take the initiative to do some filtering and screening? However, I think this is something that the Taiwanese industry itself cannot control or consider.”

Last year, a film based on the thriller game “Detention” by the Red Candle team, about the history of the “White Terror” during martial law in Taiwan in the 1960s, also failed to be released in the Chinese market. The film grossed NT$260 million (US$9.1 million) at the Taiwan box office and was even nominated for 12 awards at the 56th Taiwan Golden Horse Awards, making it the most nominated work of the year. However, when some Chinese WeChat public websites released the shortlist, they replaced the word “Back to School” with “XX” to avoid mentioning the title of the film.

“Back to School is because it has some special political connotations,” said Cai Jiajun, adding that anything related to politics is extremely sensitive in China, “so it’s not that Back to School is not popular in China, it’s that it simply can’t get in.”

Wang Shi, director of Taiwan’s Monkeys Integrated Marketing, which is responsible for the back-end marketing and promotion of “Back to School,” told Voice of America that even if we take away cultural or political sensitivities such as censorship and insults to China, the content industry itself is a risky and highly competitive industry. “If you have to produce a so-called content in line with the market of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, or the global market, in fact, a lot of things, you will be because of all the discussions, compromises, different positions, so that the commodity itself loses the characteristics it should have.”

The movie “Monster Hunter” (also translated as “Magic Hunter”), which was released in Chinese theaters in early December and co-produced by Sony Pictures (USA) and China’s Tencent, was criticized for having lines in the movie that insulted China, so the distributor pulled the film from Chinese cinemas and promised to remove scenes containing the lines.

“Such a taboo or minefield (in China) is something that even Hollywood would step on.” Wang Shi said, “For a long time in the past, content producers, including those from Taiwan and from around the world, would take for granted that China’s market of 1.3 billion people was a very, very big one, imagined to be a dream land. But in fact, after all this time, it will actually be clear to everyone that it has many realistic difficulties.”

After the Red Candle team’s “Payback” game was forced to be taken down in mid-December, it continued to spark discontent among gamers outside of China, who have gone to the GOG platform to leave messages, hoping that the platform would not self-censor in order to cater to China.

Megan Fox, founder of Glass Bottom Games, the indie game development team that developed SkateBIRD, also took action in support of the Red Candle team. On December 16, she announced on Twitter that SkateBIRD, which was originally scheduled to be available on GOG, would not be available on the platform, and she also sent a letter asking GOG to take down another game of the team that was already online.

Taiwan legislator Chen Bo Wei and his office responded to the Voice of America with the following text: “Whether it’s games, creative works, or all kinds of entertainment business, freedom is a crucial condition for creativity, and if all people compromise on Chinese rules, the vitality of creativity will surely be stifled. I think that’s the most fundamental reason why there are independent gamers who believe that China’s actions have stepped on the bottom line of game workers and are threatening to boycott.”

Chen Baiwei and his office team believe that it is because Taiwan is a democratic and free country that people can express their opinions without fear, and that it has been an important base for multiculturalism and free creativity in Asia. “The world’s market is not just China. Multilateral partnerships to counter China’s hegemony have been gradually formed in the past few years in regional networks, commerce, military, and medical care, and I think the digital and entertainment industries can also go in this direction in the future.”

“As far as the nature of your content itself, all you should have to do is just tell your story well.” Tsai Jiajun said, “There is no market fence, no national boundary in your heart, the whole world is your market.”