PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds faces potential censorship in China

GIbiz has picked up a Bloomberg piece that suggests China may be poised to crack down on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. China’s Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association has apparently declared that the “gladiator-like mentality of the computer game deviates from the values of socialism and is deemed harmful to young consumers,” which will likely make it difficult for South Korea’s Bluehole Studios to ink that Tencent deal to formally publish the game in the region.

That’s bad news for the early access survival shooter, which as Steam Spy recently noted is already performing far better in China than anywhere else on the globe, picking up another million players in the country over the last few weeks, while the US has actually lost players and the rest of the world has more or less held only even.

While one analyst called the government declaration a “death sentence” for the game, GIbiz does point out that it’s not impossible even for ultraviolent games to get by the censors; indeed, Tencent’s CSGO, PUBG’s closest thematic competitor, was given a stamp of approval there last month.

Test servers for the PUBG will rev up this week, with vaulting and climbing mechanics and ultimately a vertical map to suit. This past weekend, Bluehole also rolled out another round of anti-cheat measures.

Just your weekly reminder on how Asia is driving PUBG to the new heights, even as US players are dropping out pic.twitter.com/MNcc0meVBB

— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) October 30, 2017