Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Skeletons and China censorship

In China, it is illegal to portray skeletons and bones in video games.
How is Larian going to solve the problem? China is a big market and an opportunity to make good money.
Will there be no necromancer and skeleton encounters in the Chinese version of the game, or will they be censored? The right decision at the early development stage can save a lot of studio time and increase profit.

For example, Valve censored the Wraith King arcana in his Dota 2 game:

Original


For China

I suppose that if they'll deem China an important enough market, they'll do make the effort. I remember CD project had a similar problem when translating the Witcher 3 to Arabic when they had to tone down some of the content.

In Fallout 3, you cannot detonate a nuclear bomb and destroy a city in the Japanese version of the game, due to atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

There are no nuclear weapons in this game, but there are skeletons. Many skeletons

I don't think that it's actually illegal, just that developers play it super ultra safe with the Chinese market.
It's not that hard to get banned, they just banned tens of thousands of games on the Apple store a while back.
It's the same with sexualized content too, Chinese games are way more sexualized than Western games but it gets censored constantly for the Chinese market.
Funnily enough the same happens in Korea too with Western games.
Even Overwatch gets a '' changes recommended '' pretty much every single Blizzard game did.

Blizzard outsourced Warcraft 3 Reforged to a Chinese studio and they didn't really censor the designs outside of basically turning the skeletons into Zombies.
Diablo Immortal is going to have the Necromancer too and that game is very specifically created for the Chinese market and they did the same there.

Money is a great incentive for people to make an effort

It's also a great incentive to make a minimal effort or compromise your art.

I wouldn't worry about that here tho.

They can just replace all the skeletons with bread. Problem solved.

Your post offends the feelings of the Chinese people. Chairman Xi Jingping campaigns for clean plates. "Awfully regrettable!" he said. 40% of all orders in restaurants are thrown into the trash. Measures have already been taken to reduce excess consumption, which should not exist in socialism with the Chinese model.

The bread skeleton option is not suitable. Another solution is needed.

This.

Skellies are spoopy.

Well I'm in China and I see skeletons in game. Most games in fact. Truth is, censorship will only happen when there is a reason, it's like Canadians, they walk around doing what they do until someone in Beijing decides they need to make an example to show who really owns Vancouver real estate, and then they arbitrarily detain someone Canadian and threaten the death penalty. Unless your game has some kind of in your face message or you cross fairly obvious lines, it's odds on it'll be ignored. Censorship is a farce, as the West proves constantly too, so carry on until someone points out Xi Jinping looks like a baby owl bear. Blizzard are laughable clowns who make most Chinese look like traitors.

Censorship is everywhere, and will stay until humanity gets rid of the stupidity we have included in culture, religion and thinking. What is fine in east, it's frowned upon in west. Hurts our sensibilities.

how very rousing. cringe.

honestly, china is going to steal baldurs gate 3s assets and make a copy of it anyway. Also the game is probably going to be banned because its going to include one or another thing that the Communist party disagrees on.
Better not even bother with them.

Lets get real here. China is a dictatorship and a pretty horrific one. Without going full godwins law here, just look at what they do.
Right now ive got a pretty favoreable opinion of Larian. But i know some game companies that i cannot repsect anymore due to falling to their knees in front the Chinese.

Dont do it. if you arent a gacha or an MMORPG, the chinese probably wont buy your game anyway.

From what I read around is not so much that skeletons are outright banned, but that WoW and DoTA self censored their games just to avoid incurring in potential censorship. Thing is I can only get second hand, probably third hand info from internet since I cannot read Chinese, hence I cannot read myself about the alleged law.

I think the phrase "terrible dictatorship" is more appropriate for North Korea, where things are really bad. China has made great strides, they have conquered poverty and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and are claiming world leadership together with the United States. In a country with so many population and mentality, this is perhaps the best governance model. The successful fight against COVID-19 in China is the best proof that they know what they are doing.

However, this is not applicable to Western civilization, we have our own path and our values

Ok.
Found the paid chinese shill.

>not a dictatorship
Glorious one Party democracy.
>conquered poverty
i hope you enjoy working 12 hours a day in a cellphone company.
>Claiming world leadership
they wish, and hopefully they never will.
Look at what happens to the Uighurs, this is what living under chinas leadership entails.Reeducation, also known as violent brainwashing, and a targeted genocide by displacement. Im not even going to start talking about what happens in the prisons, aka concentration camps. Google it if youve got a tough stomache.
>Successfull fight against COVID-19
You mean successfully infecting the entire world with a contagious plague because somehow your "world leader" country cannot stop eating some of the most diseased animals on the planet including, but not limited to Bats and Pangolins.

If thats all not enaugh to convince you that China is a terrible place, just look at Hongkong and look what happens there.

Dont listen to Chinese shills.
There are literal cubicle offices full of them in China, in asian countries these tend to get ridiculed, but in the west we are not used to such nonsensical tactics.

Now i dont know if this poster is actually a shill, or more likeley one deluded by either propaganda or by beeing chinese. The chinese tend to have quite a bit of, undeserved as i might add, patriotism.

You are telling the truth, but we are talking about the fact that there are pluses in the Chinese dictatorship. I cannot imagine China's GDP per capita as Taiwan and the same level of freedom when it comes to 1 billion people.
It's clear that Taiwan is better.

I'm not Chinese, this is my personal opinion from the outside

It's not true at all that censorship only happens when there is a reason, unless you have a very loose definition of '' reason '' I guess.
Like I said tho I think that most of the time it's developers censoring games because they're trying to play it '' safe ''.
It's a lot easier and safer to just not have skeletons than to risk portraying them in a way that would be seen as offensive.

Chinese games are generally way more sexualized than Western ones, and yet even games like League of Legends are censored which is a very tame game in comparison.
Look at how ridiculous it is in Legends of Runeterra too, it's taken to an absurd level.
Even midriff is too much, Katarina got her whole body painted black in the card game.
Wild Rift which is specifically made for the Asian market too is based on the censored Chinese and Korean splashes too.
That's not a coincidence.

It even goes as far as just outright banning female champions, I can't remember exactly which country it was but in the Middle East there was a League tournament and they banned all female champions.

Games released in foreign markets just has a tendency to have this happen, like I said even Western games are censored in Asia.
And people in Asia view Westerners as pearl-clutchers too, it's like a circular thing.




This is what I've heard too, I also had a German friend rant at me before about how she is tired of people blaming Germans because Swastikas are censored in a lot of games.
There's a misconception that they're illegal to portray in games in Germany too, people just have a tendency to misunderstand these things even game developers do.

As someone in Hong Kong I'm enjoying this expert advice. Taiwan is a nice place but really boring. Where have you been?

I shall now explain to you about Chinese food. Obviously the stuff I could order in South Shields is much more authentic than your so called "Hong" "Kong".

Edit: I should probably edit this in case anyone takes me seriously. Yias is a southerner.

Edit Mk 2: she's also much better at this sort of thing than me so I should shut up.