In the MMORPG WoW there is excitement about new patch notes for the test server. They are said to filter words in the Chinese client with political sensitivity: It appears to be a case of censorship by the Chinese government against protests in Hong Kong.
What the new patch changes: The new patch on the test server for WoW, which is supposed to arrive next week, adjusts the “curse word filter” for the Chinese language, as a player reports on reddit .
The user posted a list of words that will now receive an “ID” number with the next patch and are considered “curse words.” However, the user does not provide a source for how they obtained the data.
The sensitive part is that the new “censored terms” are not curse words, but political keywords.
The soon-to-be-filtered words are all related to the protests that have been forming in Hong Kong for days and are breaking out in demonstrations. The political unrest there is directed against greater influence from the Chinese government on Hong Kong.
What is the conflict about? Hong Kong was a British Crown Colony for a long time but was handed back to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. Since then, a conflict has been brewing over the model of “one country, two systems”:
- Many residents of Hong Kong want to remain as autonomous as possible and lean more towards the West. They are entitled to special rights, such as the right to free speech, press, and assembly.
- However, Beijing seems to want to increase its influence over Hong Kong.
Only in the past few days has the conflict escalated again. Hundreds of thousands of residents of Hong Kong protested against China’s influence and demanded the resignation of Chief Executive Lam (via SpiegelOnline). They are said to be the largest demonstrations in 30 years.
The reason is a new extradition law.
These words are allegedly going to be banned in WoW: In English, they translate to terms such as:
- “Hong Kong Strike”
- “Hong Kong parade”
- “Anti-Corruption”
- “FreeHongKong”
- “Extradition Law”
- “NoExtraditionToChina”
- and similar.
This is supposed to affect only the Chinese client.
If the terms are flagged in the curse word filter, it is not possible to create guilds or characters with those names. Otherwise, the words are hidden when the filter is active.
It seems that the curse word filter is intended to prevent political protest from reaching World of Warcraft.
This is the problem: On the Reddit forum, people discuss that WoW’s chat filter is used here to censor opinions.
They wonder if Blizzard really approves of this or if they are yielding too much to their Chinese partners at NetEase. Some question whether Blizzard even has a choice.
NetEase distributes Blizzard’s games as a local partner in China. The company is also the one that developed Diablo Immortal with Blizzard.
In any case, it is a sensitive matter. It is known that Western companies must make compromises if they want to do business in China, as the Chinese government regulates market access.
At the moment, there are no statements on the matter.
We will report on MeinMMO as soon as more is known about the situation.
