Genshin Impact in-game chat censors “Hong Kong”, “Taiwan” and other pro democracy slogans

Genshin Impact is the new RPG game published by miHoYo. The game has gained some popularity since its launch and is rising with time. After coming under fire for allegedly using spyware in anti-cheat systems, the game seems to attract controversial attention yet again.

Genshin Impact is accused of censoring various words in their in-game chat feature. The words that caught an eye were “Hong Kong” and “Taiwan” and it becomes more controversial based on the fact that the game developers miHoYo are a Chinese based company.

If someone tries to type these two words, the game automatically replaces it with an asterisk (*) sign. This is mostly done to curb hateful and abusive speech in many other games and these two words do not fit this category.

Apparently, censoring such words is not new for Chinese developers. Nico Partners Analyst, Daniel Ahmed, explains why these words might be censored. Expressing his thoughts via Tweets, he said, ” Chinese developed games have to comply with a ton of content and in game censorship rules because of these laws and regulations. There is a list of banned words that cannot be used in game / via chat functions.Foreign developers also need to comply when publishing games in China.”

Furthermore, he explained that these restrictions are technically limited to China only and hence, global version can ease out these restrictions. That is the same reason for many games having a different global and a Chinese version. Example of this condition can be explained via PUBG Mobile and Arena of Valor being global variants of games Game for Peace and Honor of Kings respectively.

Considering all the conditions here, Genshin Impact can ease these restrictions for global version in the future and implement a two variant system as explained above.