Why “Marvel Rivals” Censors China Content

So Marvel Rivals is, uh, it's an incredibly popular, uh, video game. You know, you play as the Marvel characters, some, some kind of stupid fighting mashup thing. I have a Gamers Unbeaten episode coming out soon about it. Deep Thoughts While Gaming, but it was made by NetEase, which is a Chinese. Already doing really well. Yeah, that's a Chinese company. Well, fellow YouTube gamer, Asmongold found some very interesting things. We'll, we'll go ahead and play that clip right now. You know what I also heard? I heard that you can't say free Taiwan or free Hong Kong and Marvel Rivals. Now you guys know what I always say. Trust, but verify. I'm going to log in. I'm going to check it right now. Okay. Testing. This is me free. Taiwan sucks. Free Taiwan. It's it contains inappropriate length. Wow. Tiananmen Square Massacre. It didn't happen. Try Winnie the Pooh. Wow. How about that? Uh, I, I, we, we didn't show the entire clip, but like he, he does some other searches, it's not just like any political content that gets censored. He did, uh, uh, he typed nine 11 was an inside job. Uh-huh. And that's okay. That's okay. Alex Jones favorite refrain. Uh, that's okay. So it's just very specifically China stuff. And it's a shame cause you know, Disney owns both Marvel and Winnie the Pooh. They could be doing some great crossover stuff. You could get Winnie the Pooh into the game. Yeah. But, but Winnie the Pooh has to then be, uh, impossible to defeat. That's true. That's yeah. Like I think this is very interesting because at one point China was just very successful at getting Western game developers and Hollywood to self-censor on behalf of China because they wanted the China market. Now China has become so successful. That they're just making the things themselves. They're just making the things themselves. Yeah. And I think this is probably something that didn't really even cross. Cause this is a, is this a licensed thing? Like it's official. Like it's not like a Chinese knockoff. No, no, no. I don't mean a Chinese knockoff. I mean like net ease did the whole thing. And then did Disney have any say, do you know what I mean? That's a good question. I don't know how much of a say, like if there was some kind of review that Disney did and they signed off on this. Or if they're just like, I had no idea. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how much like it would occur to Disney executives to be like, I wonder if they've installed any CCP pro CCP censorship in this game. But at the same time, we have found that their organizations that have capitulated to this is even, I think we talked a couple of podcasts ago about what happened with the Hugo awards a few years ago where they knowingly censored. Uh, Chinese authors from being like able to be on the ballot because they were worried about offending the Chinese officials because the Hugo awards were being held in China. So sometimes you can be like, oh yeah, they probably don't know. And sometimes it's like, they very much know what they're doing. Isaac Asimov would be rolling in his grave if he weren't a staunch materialist atheist who believed in no soul over life after death. Okay. Yep. Um, but I mean, this is, this is what I was warning with this, with the great success of black, black myth, who Kong, a lot of Western developers are making terrible gains, uh, largely influenced by the sort of DEI consultancy companies like sweet baby Inc. And then, I mean, razor fisted and interesting video linking like that back to Canadian money and then Canada back to China, but you know, as, as Western game developers start to go down, uh, China gets lots of money by from, especially from black Kong, 10 cents starts buying up stuff. Net ease is making more games. And this really started with things like Fortnite, right? Yeah. Like the takeover of like actual popular gaming, you know, franchises in the West by Chinese companies. And I mean, they don't have the kind of financial constraints that companies in the West have where they have to make money by selling games or else they go under, uh, these, this is, this is a direction of the Chinese state. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how much directly they're being funded by because like Chinese tech companies also had a haircut a few years ago. Yeah. Well, but that was an effort of the Chinese communist party gained more control over the tech industry. Look, if, if, if a company in China, if a Chinese company is successful in propagandizing to the West and influencing the West, the CCP will not let that company die, even if it's losing money for a few years. Well, and also like, this is how the Chinese communist party works. They make these kinds of strategies to influence and propagandize to the West. I mean, Yuri Veseminov talked about how the Soviets did this. Are you a curious person? Of course you are. We're now putting full interviews only on our new China Uncensored premium website, China Uncensored dot TV. Your subscription helps support the show and gives you access to tons of amazing content. Click the link below to check it out.