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Battlefield 4 banned in China in wake of EA's China Rising DLC

by Mark Tyson on 30 December 2013, 09:35

Tags: Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA), PC

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Earlier this month, we reported that EA (Electronic Arts) is struggling with major technical glitches and bug problems just a few days after launch, in the first-person shooter game, Battlefield 4. To add insult to the injury, the game has now officially been banned by Chinese government’s Ministry of Culture.

Although the game has not officially launched in China, EA has been accused by the Chinese government for including contents in the new Battlefield 4 DLC China Rising that threatens China’s national security. The new downloadable expansion is based on a plot set in 2020 with the main character Admiral Chang of China. The admiral takes part in an attempted military coup, and joins forces with Russia to attack the American military. The player will fight to quell the coup and parts of the Chinese Liberation Army as an U.S soldier; with expectation of having to kill several waves of Chinese soldiers in order complete the game.

Aggressive attack on Chinese culture?

A statement posted on China.com, translated by Polygon, reads: "Ministry of Culture: Battlefield 4 is an illegal video game, with content that endangers national security. It is an aggressive attack on our culture. After the ban of Battlefield 4, we demand that all items related to the game — downloads, Raiders, patches and news — are to be deleted."

China's biggest social media site Weibo has also banned searches related to Battlefield 4 including the Chinese translation ‘Zhan Di 4’. But peer-to-peer download links are still being posted by online users under English names and references.

Although China would seem to be over-reacting, the ban shouldn’t affect EA much as the Chinese market has barely taken off after the recently lifted 13-year console ban. Add this to China’s infamous reputation for illegal copying; most PC versions are more likely to be peer-to-peer-purloined than paid for anyway.



HEXUS Forums :: 12 Comments

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Saw this coming.

Why did they have a 13 year ban on console gaming ?
Although I don't believe this should have been banned, it does appear to be yet more western propaganda against the rest of the world and could sour eastern/western relations among ordinary citizens. Maybe that is the view China has taken.
BAHAHAHAHA. EA really is hopeless now.
Read about this yesterday on a different site, and came across the whole Medal of Honor/Taliban controversy while getting some background on this story. (I am not a gamer of late so not really kept up to date with the BF series)

If I read that right the games company changed online version of the game so that the Taliban were renamed to ‘opposing force’ for fear of US kids playing the game on-line as the Taliban killing US soldiers (because that does not go down well apparently) or maybe keep the mindset that the US are always the good guys of the world and every one else is bad (which seems to be at odds with a recent poll that say, out of a survey 1 in 4 people think America are a threat to world peace..I can't find the link as I heard it on the radio, but I think it was 67,000 people from many countries across the globe)

No surprising then that another country also feels the same and that killing its own ‘persons’ in a game is unacceptable.
Free publicity as payback for all those illegal downloads