Asia Pacific Censorship News

Gaming store GOG changed its plans about listing horror game Devotion just a few hours after the game's developer announced it would be available on the platform. GOG tweeted:

After receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store.

Red Candle Games did not detail the messages received, but clearly these from China or Chinese website users demanding censorship of the game.

The game from Taiwanese Red Candle Games was first released on February 19, 2019. The game received critical acclaim, but contained a reference to the internet meme likening Chinese president Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh. The game was removed from Steam after six days on release. Chinese users (or bots) retaliated against the meme by review bombing the game on Steam.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the latest release in Ubisoft's longest-running franchise. It seems that not all versions of the game are equal to others. Japanese players say the game isn't what was promised, and further that it was censored egregiously compared to western versions of the game.

The Japanese release of Assassin's Creed Valhalla is censored in several significant ways. It removes or alters violent gameplay and animations related to severed limbs, torture involving inner organs, decapitated heads and female nudity, including nipples.

The game features a worldwide option to turn blood spurts during combat on and off. However, presumably because the game is already censored in Japan, the option then does very little.

Japanese buyers have also complained that the availability of the option implies that more violence is available than actually is, and so feel misled.

With the usual corporate bullshit, Ubisoft claimed that the removal of blood spurts was necessary for ratings purposes. But CERO, Japan's Computer Entertainment Rating Organization, said that that blood spurts comparable to previous Assassin's Creed releases in Japan were included when it did its rating.

Update: Patched

27th November 2020. See article from gamerant.com

Ubisoft is issuing a fix to Assassin's Creed Valhalla following the revelation that Japanese versions of the game had depictions of blood censored.

A Japanese Ubiblog post has now acknowledges the problematic censorship, stating that blood cannot be depicted in-game and that the development team is preparing a patch to solve the issue releasing sometime in December. Ubisoft goes on to apologize for the inconvenience to its customers.

The Government of Turkey has fined Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram 10 million lira ($1.2 million) each for not complying with a new social media censorship law that took effect last month. The law places penalties on any refusal by social media companies to take down posts that the government deems offensive.

According to the law, social media sites with more than one million Turkish daily users must appoint a fall guy accountable to Turkish courts, abide by governmental orders to remove offensive content within 48 hours, and store user data inside Turkey.

Beginning with fines, the law gives the government the ability to increase penalties up to the cutting of sites' bandwidth by 90%, essentially blocking access to the social media platform altogether.

It will be interesting to see if Turkey is willing to block social media, surely local businesses would not be very impressed by such a move.