Tencent Invest In Platinum Games

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Sep 11, 2013
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Bayonetta 3 and Babylon’s Fall developer Platinum Games has received a capital investment from Tencent Holdings as a basis for partnership, the company announced. The partnership has no effect on the independence of Platinum Games, which will continue operations under its current corporate structure.

Platinum Games president and CEO Kenichi Sato said the company will use the capital from Tencent Holdings to “strengthen our foundation as a business and expand from game development into exploring self-publishing,” as well as achieve “a wider global perspective, while still creating high quality games that stay true to our name.”
 
This should alarm some people. Tencent is a Chinese company. When they say a "wider global perspective" they really mean "only things that get by the strict Chinese censorship". Also, if someone playing your game happens to be streaming and says something like "Support Hong Kong", get ready for the banhammer.
 
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It doesn’t say a “controlling Interest” at least I’d like to think if it were that would be stated. And anything that doesn’t get by the Chinese censors should still release in the West…….I would hope. So this doesn’t seem like anything to worry about. Its just Capitalism where the pursuit of unending growth and profits are the golden rule.

If anything more capital gives PG more freedom to make/publish the games they want to make.
 
It doesn’t say a “controlling Interest” at least I’d like to think if it were that would be stated. And anything that doesn’t get by the Chinese censors should still release in the West…….I would hope. So this doesn’t seem like anything to worry about. Its just Capitalism where the pursuit of unending growth and profits are the golden rule.

If anything more capital gives PG more freedom to make/publish the games they want to make.

The problem is what happened in Rainbow Six Siege. Siege was out in the west and all was fine, until they wanted to release in China, and suddenly their censors had some really weird problems. Siege is an adult game with realistic guns and blood splatter, but that wasn't the only thing that was going to go. Apparently skulls are offensive to Chinese people, so every death icon had to change. Same with a knife icon. The knife icon for a melee kill was going to get changed to a fist. Different cultures have very, very different ideas about what is "offensive" (in the west we'd say that a game with a mature rating is pretty open outside of extreme things).

The problem was Ubisoft didn't want to maintain 2 separate versions, so they just were going to throw all the changes into everyone's version. People of course were extremely angry and eventually got Ubi to not force the changes on us. Suddenly people living in the west were almost at the mercy of Chinese censors, and that was upsetting for obvious reasons (more than the actual changes themselves).


You see other examples in more than gaming. In the Doctor Strange movies, the Ancient One (a Tibentan monk) got changed to Tilda Swinton. People thought it was something about forcing a woman in there, but it was really to get past the Chinese. Any reference to Tibet would be instantly shot down and never get shown in China, so they changed our movie to match another country's ideals.
 
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The problem is what happened in Rainbow Six Siege. Siege was out in the west and all was fine, until they wanted to release in China, and suddenly their censors had some really weird problems. Siege is an adult game with realistic guns and blood splatter, but that wasn't the only thing that was going to go. Apparently skulls are offensive to Chinese people, so every death icon had to change. Same with a knife icon. The knife icon for a melee kill was going to get changed to a fist. Different cultures have very, very different ideas about what is "offensive" (in the west we'd say that a game with a mature rating is pretty open outside of extreme things).

The problem was Ubisoft didn't want to maintain 2 separate versions, so they just were going to throw all the changes into everyone's version. People of course were extremely angry and eventually got Ubi to not force the changes on us. Suddenly people living in the west were almost at the mercy of Chinese censors, and that was upsetting for obvious reasons (more than the actual changes themselves).


You see other examples in more than gaming. In the Doctor Strange movies, the Ancient One (a Tibentan monk) got changed to Tilda Swinton. People thought it was something about forcing a woman in there, but it was really to get past the Chinese. Any reference to Tibet would be instantly shot down and never get shown in China, so they changed our movie to match another country's ideals.


I hear what you're saying. But..........

If foreign companies want to do business in China they have to play by their rules to a certain extent. The changes you mention are the fault of those companies wanting access to a huge market. China is China and not like any other country. You can disagree with how they do things but it doesn’t make them wrong and everyone else right. Its just a different culture.
 
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Reactions: Frozpot
I hear what you're saying. But..........

If foreign companies want to do business in China they have to play by their rules to a certain extent. The changes you mention are the fault of those companies wanting access to a huge market. China is China and not like any other country. You can disagree with how they do things but it doesn’t make them wrong and everyone else right. Its just a different culture.

China can enforce whatever laws it likes... in China. I'm not anywhere near China and I don't want to be impacted by Chinese laws. I don't care what China does in China. Developers can make localized versions of games that meet Chinese law. However when they modify all versions of the game to meet the standards of one select group, that's a problem.

My local state and country can make laws that I don't like, but I can vote and write my politicians. I at least have a tiny bit of say.
 
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