Guilty Gear -STRIVE- Removes Taiwan, Tibet and Uyghur Reference
A recent patch for Guilty Gear -STRIVE- has removed mention of Taiwan, Tibet and Uyghur from China-lore entry.
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| Guilty Gear -STRIVE- Removes Taiwan, Tibet and Uyghur Reference |
On its global launch earlier last month, 2D fighting game Guilty Gear -STRIVE- from developer Arc System Works and publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment has been well received by fans and critics for its many aspects of improvement.
Though praised for gameplay mechanics, GG -STRIVE- became a topic of discussion lately after Arc System has quietly removed a number of reference to Taiwan, Tibet and Uyghur though a patch that changes in-game lore related to China.
According to a post on ResetEra forum, ASW secretly issued a patch that has updated GGST to V1.03 in late June. When players took notice of it shortly afterwards, neither Arc System Works nor Bandai Namco has released a statement yet.
Guilty Gear series has an overarching lore unlike many other fighting games out there and GG -STRIVE- comes with its own baggage as well. Fans can browse through GGST in-game glossary and access to substantial amount of backstory.
Within these text entries, there were mentions of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan in one sentence and Mongolia, Siberia, Tibet as well as Uygher in another line, both of which are patched out by Arc System Works and have now been changed.
ASW has also altered a mention of "China" into "Federation of China" that talks about how they took over enamoring borders, a little gesture from developer and publisher of GG -STRIVE- that is a very clear sign of bending the knee to China.
Guilty Gear fans calls out Arc System Works for caving in to Chinese authority on Twitter and other social media.
To be clear, the left image is what it is now, while the right image is what it was before the recent update.
— Nabil #BLM #StopAsianHate (@Neoxon619) June 30, 2021
China is currently being ruled by authoritarian regime of Chinese Communist Party and Chinese law these days go further beyond great firewall when it comes to monitoring video games that features anything threatening to national unity.
In recent years, China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and is involved in mass genocide of its Uyghur population of Muslim ethnic minorities in north-west province of Xinjiang by various humanitarian organizations.
China is also sending many Tibetans into forced labor camps similar to Xinjiang and sees Taiwan as part of their mainland. CCP and their political issues have recently started to put pressure on Chinese video game market due to censorship.
Back in 2019, first-person psychological horror game Devotion from Taiwanese game developer Red Candle Games was removed from Steam due to an in-game reference to Chinese president, Xi Jinping who is compared to Winnie the Pooh.
Last year, China banned Animal Crossing: New Horizons when Hong Kong protesters took it by storm with pro-Hong Kong message. Later in October, action role-playing game Genshin Impact censored out Hong Kong and Taiwan from chat.
Guilty Gear -STRIVE- is currently available to play on Windows PC via Steam, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. On its debut week, GG -STRIVE- becomes one of the best-selling retail games in Japan, selling more than 11,000 physical copies.
