For those interested, read “The impact of game censorship and regulations on foreign game consoles in China”, by Jiaqiang Zhang and Candy Lim Chiu. Or you can read the longer “The Dark Souls of Internationalization: Video Game Developers Enter the Chinese Market”, from Michel Wagner.
Citting Wagner: “This study finds that outside of marketing and market access, publishers offer localization services, quality assurance, and piracy consulting, including potentially paying off piracy sites from listing their games for periods of time. For these services, publishers expect a revenue sharing model which has been called “in line with industry standards” (Dangen, 2020). This thesis assumed that, from Gandia and Gardet (2019) that Chinese publishers would demand a more significant amount provided their exclusive capabilities of providing market access as seen by the movie industry (Grimm, 2015). This furthers the argument by Cao and Downing (2008) and Fung (2016) that the Chinese video game industry is largely controlled by the market more than the government. Additionally, despite Gandia and Gardet’s (2019) findings that IP transference is often a demand by publishers, this has not been found in this study. These findings, therefore, build onto Resource Dependency Theory literature by Gandia and Gardet (2019).
Where self-publishers struggle is marketing their games in the Chinese market. Due to the language barriers and the different media platforms used in China, it seems that the most difficult barriers to overcome in China, are not the regulatory institutions, but cultural ones.” (pages 86-87)
This study reported in its previous pages that, for example, a developer decided to make some changes in his game not because of CCP ordered this or that, but because he was aware that those changes were needed to not offend his PUBLIC for CULTURAL reasons.
Have some fun doing some reading. Or dont and keep believing in the voices in your heads.
cc @Hjoerleif and @Player870583437