China’s content regulator has said it is unlikely to grant licences to Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds.
That’s according to Reuters, which reports that the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association said the game “severely deviates from the socialist core value and the Chinese traditional culture and moral rule”, adding that it ‘goes against the psychological and physical health of juvenile customers’.
This is part of President Xi Jinping’s vision of a China as a ‘culturally confident rejuvenated great power’
This is something that Bluehole needs to address, especially as China represents the biggest games market on the planet. Its PC market was worth $13.1bn in 2016, according to IHS research.
At the moment, Chinese players make up roughly 30 to 40 per cent of users on Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds via Steam. That platform is in China illegally, with concerns that lawmakers might seek to boot it from the region.
This comes as Tencent launches its own PC games platform, WeGame, with hints that Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds might come to that storefront.
Playerunknown's Battlegrounds has sold more than 13m copies since its March launch. It has helped popularise the battle royale genre and is without a doubt the biggest PC release of 2017.