China has banned Animal Crossing

[USN Peter]

Source 1:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1248459402048200706

Source 2:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1248480481181495296

 

[Mars Adept]

This depressing.

Why does everything have to be political or be politically charged? It stresses me out. I just want to play a funny game about living a second life.

 

[FancyThat]

oh wow that's awful. I have someone on my switch friends list in China I knew for years on New Leaf

 

[qwyzxv7]

it makes me so sad to see this it is such an oppressed country

 

[splutterguttss]

I've always thought about moving to China in the future, but the way it's run just makes it so much less appealing. I'm not going anywehre if I can't play my Animal Crossing!

 

[Xara]

literally what? that’s insane

 

[Nami]

Wow. That's disgusting.

 

[Mayor Ng]

It's very unfortunate but players should've seen it coming, many games have been brought down worldwide because of politicization or disturbing contents. If you want to talk politics, then do it outside of games that are made solely for entertainment purposes. Nintendo will definitely be upset about it considering the amount of money China's market would've generated

 

[redlovett]

I live in Hong Kong, and I'll be so honest, I was really annoyed when I found out this happened, but considering this has been going on for a very long time where I live, I just wasn't shocked. Honestly, because of what's going on in HK, I really started to hate living in HK and I've lived here since I was three.
Anyway, I'm quite happy I got the game before this happened.

 

[PeachTea04]

I remember when I was in China, my roommate and I, in our hotel room, turned on the tv to watch something which happened to be the news, it was about how the Chinese were trying to steal filipino islands or something, idk the details but anyways, the tv kept turning itself off, which was weird cuz it never did that, even on other channels. 0_0 I found that very sus

 

[Alolan_Apples]

I think the moment where China crossed the line was when they banned South Park completely. I may be more passionate towards Animal Crossing than South Park, but the reason why I felt they were worse off banning South Park was because they retaliated to criticism, banning an entire show because one episode exposed their cruel actions and the media’s surrendering to their government to make more profit. If you do something evil, then attack others for criticizing you for it, then you are a monster.

It’s also stupid to ban an entire game nationwide because of how some players play some game. In order for media to get banned across the entire United States, it’s up to the corporations that own it to decide (like how Disney handled Song of the South), and even they won’t ban media because of how users of their media handled it.

 

[Millysaurusrexjr]

Everything gets banned in China at this point

 

[mayortiffany]

Given the Great Firewall and the content of the protests, I can't say I'm surprised.

I'm sure there will still be illicit ways to bring in the game to China, and of course, there is always the option of buying the game on a foreign Switch and importing it from abroad. May be tough with our current situation and travel restrictions worldwide, of course.

I wonder if Nintendo will ever try to prevent such bans in the future, given that China is such a big potential market. After all, their middle class is larger than the entire population of the United States; lots of market potential to be tapped here. Not that you can ever completely control online play though.

 

[zee=^w^=]

I got this game PRECISELY because China banned it. I threw in Hong Kong protest slogans on my island just to make my point. I've never played any Animal Crossing games before this.

So Nintendo might have lost part of the Chinese market, but they certainly did gain new players because of this political event. I didn't have a Nintendo Online subscription before this game and I got a subscription because of this game too.

 

[Eevees]

This is so sad and just wrong!

 

[Flyffel]

It's very unfortunate but players should've seen it coming, many games have been brought down worldwide because of politicization or disturbing contents. If you want to talk politics, then do it outside of games that are made solely for entertainment purposes. Nintendo will definitely be upset about it considering the amount of money China's market would've generated

Or, like, only really in oppressed countries like PrC.

 

[ForgottenT]

It's very unfortunate but players should've seen it coming, many games have been brought down worldwide because of politicization or disturbing contents. If you want to talk politics, then do it outside of games that are made solely for entertainment purposes. Nintendo will definitely be upset about it considering the amount of money China's market would've generated

Don’t bash freedom of speech, this is all on the dictatorship that is China, and their constant victim playing, don’t give the communist party your voice, if someone had made a Winnie the Pooh design the game would have been banned too.

 

[Mayor Ng]

Or, like, only really in oppressed countries like PrC.

There are many oppressive regimes throughout history and even today although PrC gets the limelight because it is the biggest nation in the world in term of population size. There are always pros and cons but I don't like getting into politics because there are no winning sides. Just stating that players knowing China's tendencies all too well should have seen it coming and that Nintendo will not be too happy about it considering the NH game is also unfinished and now missing a big market (revenue)

 

[limiya]

I’ve heard about this happening in China but never ended up actually reading any articles about it! This is really sad tbh, especially since they’re one of the countries that got hit the hardest with the Coronavirus and all. I also think it’s pretty sad that the government got that upset over people making anti-government stuff for their islands on a virtual game?? Idk it just seems super extra to flat out ban the whole game imo

 

[greenvoldemort]

i heard about that recently.. god my heart goes out to the gamers in china, tho the bigger problem is the censorship!