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Guilty Gear Strive removes all references of Uyghur, Tibet, and Taiwan from the Official Backstory (Update: Steam and PlayStation now both censored)

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Deleted member 5593

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Oct 25, 2017
2,635
I see this being circulated around the web from steam forums (traverse there at your own peril):

f-6eN2YdLCL3aqju_HX2nQ_FDK_WomSBXtr4fILB9II.jpg


It's really sad to see after all the good will the game is generating. But it still needs to be said: Fuck the CCP.

Edit: seems to be on certain versions of the game?
Neoxon said:
I can confirm that the changes aren't in the PS5 version for North America.





Though to be perfectly clear, they shouldn't have removed any mention of the countries in question anywhere in any version of the game. Grow a fucking backbone, ASW.
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EDIT 2: All versions now:

Neoxon said:
The latest update removed the countries discussed in the OP.
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Last edited:
Mesoian

Mesoian

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Oct 28, 2017
26,522
Korea as well right? Which is odd because there are straight up Korean characters in the former cast.

It's also weird that they'd remove mention of them in terms of small nations with large populations essentially crumbling.

But we all know why this is happening.
 
Scrappy-Fan92

Scrappy-Fan92

Member
Jan 14, 2021
8,914
I wasn't even aware Guilty Gear's lore accounted for so many real-world countries and ethnic groups. Shameful that this happened and ASW (or whoever enacted the change) needs to be messaged about this.
 
Mesoian

Mesoian

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Scrappy-Fan92 said:
I wasn't even aware Guilty Gear's lore accounted for so many real-world countries and ethnic groups. Shameful that this happened and ASW (or whoever enacted the change) needs to be messaged about this.
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To be fair, for most of the lore, it usually ends with "...and then they died too."
 
nin

nin

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Oct 26, 2017
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I don't understand. Can someone elaborate ?

Why did they change it ?
 
Small Red Boy

Small Red Boy

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nin said:
I don't understand. Can someone elaborate ?

Why did they change it ?
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The probably want to enter the Chinese market and to do that they need approval from the CCP, so they can censor anything. This happens a lot in Hollywood.

Here's an interesting article on how this happens in Hollywood, I'd assume some of it applies to games
pen.org

Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing

This report examines the ways in which Beijing’s censors have affected and influenced Hollywood and the global filmmaking industry.
pen.org pen.org
 
Harry Potter Obama

Harry Potter Obama

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Feb 13, 2018
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I get that they'd need to remove some of this stuff in order to get it published in China but they should at least leave it in in the non-Chinese versions.
 
Weiss

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Well it was a nice few days being interested in Guilty Gear again.
 
horkrux

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Oct 27, 2017
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Considering how badly these seem have been written, it's actually a change for the better.

Quite the feat
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

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Oct 25, 2017
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nin said:
I don't understand. Can someone elaborate ?

Why did they change it ?
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The Chinese Communist Party does not recognize Taiwan as state - both China and Taiwan claim to be the rightful continuations of historical China - so giving legitimately to Taiwan upsets them.

Tibet has been occupied by China as an "autonomous region", and the Tibetan diaspora promotes independence, which the Chinese Communist Party is again threatened by.

The Chinese Communist Party is conducting genocide on the Uyghurs, a primarily Muslim ethnic group native to another autonomous region in China.

Hong Kong was a British colony that was set to the returned to China. This leads to tensions as Hong Kong tries to maintain its level of independence and China tries to integrate them into the fold, such China's attempts to force them onto Mandarin language which they've set as the national standard instead of the local Cantonese. Currently the Communist Party of China is repressing the freedom of the press and pro-democracy activists as part of a big push against Hong Kong.

China houses 18% of the human population and its economy is believed to be soon to eclipse the United States, so companies are eager to please the Chinese Communist Party in order to establish themselves in that growing market.
 
MatrixMan.exe

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Oct 25, 2017
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15prints said:
The probably want to enter the Chinese market and to do that they need approval from the CCP, so they can censor anything. This happens a lot in Hollywood.

Here's an interesting article on how this happens in Hollywood, I'd assume some of it applies to games
pen.org

Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing

This report examines the ways in which Beijing’s censors have affected and influenced Hollywood and the global filmmaking industry.
pen.org pen.org
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You would be right, it does apply to games. Releasing new games and content in China is often a monumental task because you have so many hoops to jump through, approvals to pass, partner with a local company to help publish and distribute the title etc. It's a very unfortunate reality and I'm not sure what the solution is other than for developers and publishers to boycott the Chinese market, but I know that's not always financially viable, especially for the smaller ones.
 
jetsetrez

jetsetrez

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Oct 27, 2017
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There needs to be more of a pushback from consumers. People need to tell these companies on a larger scale that they either need to recognize the existence of these people or lose our sales. They have to choose whether they want to cowtow to the CCP's distortion of reality and admit these peoples' existence is less important to them than selling some games in China, or recognizing reality and selling to the rest of the world. There should be no equivocation, companies only respond when enough people put their money where their mouth is.
 
phant0m

phant0m

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Oct 29, 2017
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CCP's greatest accomplishment is not the censoring of material for their own people, but instead getting companies to do it to foreigners for them.

all hail the mighty dollar
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

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Oct 25, 2017
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jetsetrez said:
There needs to be more of a pushback from consumers. People need to tell these companies on a larger scale that they either need to recognize the existence of these people or lose our sales. They have to choose whether they want to cowtow to the CCP's distortion of reality and admit these peoples' existence is less important to them than selling some games in China, or recognizing reality and selling to the rest of the world. There should be no equivocation, companies only respond when enough people put their money where their mouth is.
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Considering how many people there are that consume goods made in or trying to appeal to China, and considering how there are similar issues that go ignored elsewhere (e.g. the overrepresentation of Muslims in French prisons), it isn't really reasonable to expect the change to come from a large scale movement from consumers. There are too many minds that have to be changed.

There are a smaller amount of companies than consumers, which means there are a smaller number of actors involved, so the pressure goes there.
 
Ashlette

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Oct 28, 2017
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The CCP is a plague to everyone, including (sane) leftists.

Can't wait for the day that a company stands against the damn party without being sinophobic.
 
nampad

nampad

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Oct 27, 2017
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Wow, already bought the game at launched and played only for 2 hours max.

Is there a chance that I can refund it on PSN? Not going to support that bullshit CCP pandering.
 
Stock

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Is this really a CCP issue, or simply an edit to in-game flavor text in order to appeal to and not offend the Chinese Market whom ASW wish to sell a videogame to? Lots of products try to reach the broadest audience and not offend. Seems unreasonable to demand ASW "grow a backbone" by keeping the charged language in this case.
 
Weiss

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Stock said:
Is this really a CCP issue, or simply an edit to in-game flavor text in order to appeal to and not offend the Chinese Market whom ASW wish to sell a videogame to? Lots of products try to reach the broadest audience and not offend. Seems unreasonable to demand ASW "grow a backbone" by keeping the charged language in this case.
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They probably shouldn't be offended by the acknowledgement that other countries don't belong to China.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

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Stock said:
Is this really a CCP issue, or simply an edit to in-game flavor text in order to appeal to and not offend the Chinese Market whom ASW wish to sell a videogame to? Lots of products try to reach the broadest audience and not offend. Seems unreasonable to demand ASW "grow a backbone" by keeping the charged language in this case.
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It doesn't really matter if the reason the market might be offended is due to information control policies and the CCP's agenda.
 
Addleburg

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Nov 16, 2017
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Stock said:
Is this really a CCP issue, or simply an edit to in-game flavor text in order to appeal to and not offend the Chinese Market
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These two things go hand in hand. The Chinese market is a reflection of government's rhetoric and stances. If more companies didn't kowtow to them, then maybe it'd be less controversial to acknowledge the existence of Taiwan as a country (assuming said products weren't then banned by the government).
 
Zomba13

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Oct 25, 2017
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Can't believe it hasn't been said yet but this is bullshit blazing.

fuck the CCP and I'm so disappointed in Arcsys giving in to them.
 
jetsetrez

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L Thammy said:
Considering how many people there are that consume goods made in or trying to appeal to China, and considering how there are similar issues that go ignored elsewhere (e.g. the overrepresentation of Muslims in French prisons), it isn't really reasonable to expect the change to come from a large scale movement from consumers. There are too many minds that have to be changed.

There are a smaller amount of companies than consumers, which means there are a smaller number of actors involved, so the pressure goes there.
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Unfortunately companies almost never take moral positions that stand to lose or cost them money. Many companies even consider it a fiduciary responsibility not to. You only see moral positions factoring into large company decisions when it comes to adhering to laws, responding to consumer pushback (what I'm calling for), or in some cases when companies are either privately owned, small businesses, or have activist executives that have strong moral positions that they are willing to have the company stand for, which unfortunately I would say does not apply to any of the big video game publishers.
 
dgamemaster

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Jun 29, 2020
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Yikes, removing mentions of Taiwan is not the greatest look. I will argue that if someone is knowledgeable about geography (which sadly not many do fully know about) then it can be reasonably inferred that the text is referring to said countries. They didn't make the statement to be purely pro CCP from what I can tell, as I think one can still interpret the text's original meaning if they are aware of history in the right way. Still, it's no excuse for removing the mentions of Taiwan and the other regions. This is definitely an indicator of the CCP's field of influence over corporations. I don't think this ruins the game for me, but it is a sour note in an otherwise great launch.
 
sibarraz

sibarraz

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Oct 27, 2017
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ASW knew that they cannot change society, So instead of reflecting on themselves, they blamed the beasts
 
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