https://rainbow6.ubisoft.com/siege/en-us/news/152-337194-16/aesthetic-changes-in-y3s4 This is absolutely crazy news, basically Ubisoft will be censoring Siege due to the Chinese Goverment. The Siege community on Reddit has gone postal (and with good reason) https://www.reddit.com/r/Rainbow6/ Massive story that deserves attention on guru3d front page.
Interesting since China is currently cracking down on gaming too, makes sense however since Steam alone has seen a increase of 60 some million accounts just for China alone for this year I believe it was. That would be incentive enough to tweak certain aspects of the game without spending the resources on making a entirely different branch for the Chinese client. EDIT: It's certainly unfortunate that they're modifying the game world-wide but the profits they stand to make if the game can break through the Chinese market and if it's not blocked or restricted in the wake of China protecting the eyes of it's youth (Myopia, nearsightedness being a huge problem from what I've read about it so far.) as the party was calling it then yeah I can see Ubisoft being very keen on establishing the game here. Competition isn't going to be easy though but the market is massive and the profits they stand to make from sales of the game and in-game additional purchases would be enormous if it can reach a similar level of popularity and that's just in China alone. Hmm wonder if For Honor might be up for plans for a Chinese rating and acceptance on being released on the market as well especially with the new Chinese inspired faction having been added if it's not already available. I'm thinking Ubisoft is trying to establish but they'd need a few titles in different genres for best effect then. (Assassin's Creed should have already passed since the earlier games were all updated with Chinese localization patches throughout 2017 and 2018 but for the online multiplayer audience well this, For Honor and maybe The Crew for sports or at least a racing game? We'll see.) EDIT: Essentially I'm thinking they might be doing a strategy or business plan to expand onto the Chinese market more firmly. Due to the millions of potential players and the profits they stand to make, some complaints are unfortunately going to be ignored for what they stand to win or profit from if things go well since that's going to be the main incentive. (Thus complying with any and all requirements from the Chinese government to ease being allowed sales in the region.) Though they could certainly split the assets to be different or censored in China but that would cost them money, which yeah of course the stand to earn it back but a singular version to maintain and update would be simpler and also faster with less work involved. (It's money as usual put simply, earning a higher profit and revenue and faster or with less maintenance I suppose if they split it into multiple code branches for certain regional changes.)
This is just straight outrageous. They're turning their mature promoted game into a teen rated game for chinese market.It's like taking away its substance, imagin the same thing happening to GTA5. They're removing skulls, slot machine, any violence reference like blood splatters, and any sexual reference. There were some sexy neon light at several places on several maps. I mean, this game was freaking promoted as mature, it's not anymore, consumers/players got screwed on what they bought into. I wonder if it's even legal. https://rainbow6.ubisoft.com/siege/en-us/news/152-337194-16/aesthetic-changes-in-y3s4 The scope is seriously huge, and the impact on map design and therefore atmosphere is as well. Maps 'yacht' for instance features a casino room, that will most likely will have to be completely changed... There's condoms and cocaine line in a lot of places... blood splatter on every bullet impact...
Not sure why the all the hate towards a country since in Germany they had ton of censorship for a long time yet the rest of the world dealt with that. The real issue is why is Ubishite still a bone lazy company that would not have TWO versions, one for a restricted market and one that is full for others. Oh its because they are don't care about the rest of the market when one market will pull in more profits than the other complaining ones combined. Same story for their crap PC ports from consoles...
The issue here is that it is a global change based on the whims of a foreign government and I will no longer buy anything from Ubisoft if that is the case. If China wants this kind of censorship, I guess that's on them but for UbiStupid to push these changes globally is totally unacceptable. Bluntly, they can go f**k themselves.
I really don't see the issue here. They are changing some minor artwork that isn't essential to the gameplay Because this is an incredibly competitive game. If this was single player only then sure they can keep two versions but not for multiplayer. The game needs to perform the exact same for everyone especially in competitions.
This is why I don't trust and won't support big game publishers in the future. All they seem to care about is some quick revenue and make shareholders happy.
I remember Blizzard had to do the same thing when WoW released over there. They couldn't show skeletons so player corpses became tomb stones. At least they got their separate client.
Yea lets make every game going forward around china censorship. No more black people in games. No more korean people in games. No more taoist or buddhist characters or clothing in any games. No more skeletons, no more blood and gore. Mmm mmm diversity is our strength. Welcome our chineese overlords. They could just have a build exclusive to the china market period. So what they have to play among other chineese nationals, like they want their people corrupted by our western muslim or catholic thinking anyway.
