Love conquers all — except for Chinese gaming regulations, if the recently proposed rules for game content regulation come to pass. The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, has recently published a draft list of proposed rules regarding what kind of content can be shown in Chinese video games of various age ratings.
The proposed regulations, which were formulated through a collaborative effort between the Chinese government and Chinese gaming companies such as NetEase, Perfect World Entertainment, and Tencent, would forbid games from depicting plotlines that “encourage romance” or “hint at sexual behavior” in all games while also squashing any scenarios that allow players to be married in games rated for players ages 16 or under.
Depictions of women in video games will also be targeted by the new rules, which dictate that female characters must wear clothing that “[covers] more than three quarters of their breasts.” You can kiss chain-mail bikinis goodbye as well, thanks to the rule that characters should not “wear clothes that are inappropriate for the environment that they are in.”
Although these new regulatory guidelines “are at an initial stage and will need to go through several rounds of consultation before they are implemented,” this nevertheless seems to be the Chinese government’s next step in exerting tighter control over the country’s gaming industry. The move comes following heightened concerns over gaming addiction and “content that promotes violence or ideologies that are not in line with those advocated by the ruling Communist party,” which last year resulted in the suspension of new gaming license approvals, though the suspension has since been lifted.
