Censorship and Government Consideration of Games in China

Actually, many who follow IT news have heard that since 2016 in China, the release of the game requires approval from a government agency. Since I am more or less in the subject, I want to talk about it in more detail.



So the Chinese portal ahgame.com is ironic about this topic. 行政 审批 - reviewed by the government.



This practice has been around for a long time (at least, the main regulatory act on this topic - “Interim measures for managing online games” ( 网络 游戏 暂行 管理 办法 ） were taken as early as 2010), but they only actively started playing games from August 2016 So, at least three ministries are responsible for this industry:

1) The Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China is, so to speak, a guiding organization that sets the standards for what is permissible and what is not in games, books and people's minds.

2) The Ministry of Industry and Informatization of the People's Republic of China is a young but extremely energetic department that has managed to complete its incomplete 8 years of existence (yes, it was founded in 2008) to become the undisputed leader in terms of mentioning in the media

3) The State Administration of Press, Television, Radio Broadcasting and Cinema of the PRC - well, everything is clear here and so.



So, you are a developer, you have just completed the development of your project, it is great and amazing, you are already mentally picking up a jacket to match your Rolls-Royce, but that was not the case. First you have to go through five stages (no, not accepting the inevitable).





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Stage 1. Registration of a business license (营业 执照）. Well, this is quite logical and normal. True, if you are a foreigner, then at this step your development career will end, since under current legislation, for a company engaged in activities in the Internet requires a share capital of Chinese origin> 51%. Such is protectionism in its purest form.



Stage 2. It requires registration of a copyright certificate for the game (despite the general misconception, China is very and very earnestly protecting copyright, and the question of why they all wanted to spit on foreign copyright is a topic for a separate large article. In short, for the British government, Nokia and Nokla are obviously similar, but in China, Nokia (诺基亚） and Nokla (诺卡） are two completely different brands, and one identical hieroglyph is not a reason for accusation. Well, okay, the topic is not about This). At the same stage you will be required to design permission to conduct cultural activities on the Internet (网络 文化 经营 许可证), ICP (Internet Content Provider) license, and if you have a virtual currency in the game, then you also need to approve it in accordance with the same on game management.



Stage 3. At this stage you need to get approval from the State Radio and Television. To do this, you need to provide (this is official information from the State Radio and Television website:



1) All textual and graphic information about the game, textual must include: a general description of the game, a description of the development company, dialogues with NPCs, names of objects, a list of tasks, a description of the system for combating game addiction (also a separate topic), a list of blocked words and other related materials.

2) 10-minute video about the game (on disk), which includes a description of the login process in the game, the use of basic skills and general gameplay

3) game client (on disks) in 6 copies

4) photocopies of company documents (license, ICP and others).



Stage 4. There is already, in principle, receiving all the necessary documents, before sending what was not passed, in general - the final



Stage 5. Running the game into operation. Well, if you have gone through the previous four stages, then you are already a guru and have known Zen, and there is nothing terrible for you in this world.



Actually, I would like to avoid comparisons and disputes. I am personally amazed not by the fact that everything is so controlled here. What amazes me is not the fact that this very control has already reached everything. I was most struck by the next line from the State TV and Radio Company number 2. It says "世界 ： 再 临" It actually says that on July 25, 2016, World of Warcraft passed the approval of the State TV and Radio Commission and got the publishing number 997. And now again, carefully read step 1 of stage 3 and imagine a big truck that brought all this from the office of NetEase (a WoW Chinese publisher) to the building of the Public Broadcaster. Who played in WoW, he will understand - the number of different books and letters, quest dialogs, NPC replicas and the like content there tends to infinity.



Somewhere in the Chinese translators forum, I saw the mention of a total of 2 billion text characters in WoW. Considering the fact that in a regular book with a volume of about 15 author’s sheets - about half a million characters, this turns out to be 2 thousand full-size books.