China Launches its Own Version of PUBG
Following a rather significant overhaul of the gaming censorship body in China, one thing has become abundantly clear. Namely, that while the market is exceptionally lucrative, it’s hard to get your games officially released there any more.
Particularly games that have blood, zombies, bodies or gambling.
Surprisingly, however, PUBG Mobile was able to launch in the country and has, to date, proven to be very successful. In a report via the BBC, however, China has reportedly decided to replace the game with their own ‘patriotic’ version. Make of that term what you will!
“Force For Peace”
The new game ‘Force For Peace’ has removed all of the blood and a lot of the violence, but essentially is a complete carbon copy of PUBG. Well, with a few state-approved socialist messages included within.
Despite Tencent successfully licensing PUBG for use in China, various rules meant that they were never able to actually profit from it. As such, the release of a ‘state-approved’ knock-off always seemed to be the likely conclusion.
What Do We Think?
It was always doubtful under the new gaming censorship board that PUBG would ever see an official release. Given that China is, incidentally, also the king of knock-offs seeing them release their own version is hardly surprising.
It is perhaps a little unusual to see that the games are so similar though that it is even supporting importing of accounts from the original mobile game. It does, however, suggest that this might be the pattern of any major releases planned for the country in the future.
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
