Video Game Censorship

Released on December 6th, 2024, Marvel Rivals took the video game world by storm and quickly rose to the top of the charts. Marvel Rivals is a 6 versus 6 hero-shooter game that combines the popular heroes from the Marvel IP and fast, addicting gameplay to create a wildly interesting and fun game. The game has over 500,000 concurrent players on PC alone, with many more on consoles. Marvel Rivals seemed like the perfect game after countless years of disappointment in the hero-shooter genre, which from a technical standpoint, it is. 

However, Marvel Rivals is daunted by a much bigger issue that has gone mostly under the radar since its release. Censorship in video games is a pretty big topic for many gamers in the US. When games like Call of Duty or Overwatch tighten their speech and text restrictions, players respond with boycotts or negative reviews to show their displeasure. The issue for many is that Marvel Rivals was developed by Chinese internet giant, NetEase Games. NetEase is mainly known for making mobile games from popular existing IPs like Call of Duty Mobile. The company is known for its close ties with censorship restrictions which are enforced in mainland China. Within Marvel Rivals itself, terms like “Free Hong Kong,”  “1989,” “Winnie the Pooh,” and “Free Taiwan,” are a few of the many phrases that are automatically censored in-game. These are all remarks and phrases that are sensitive to the Chinese public for their respective reasons. 

Marvel Rivals isn’t the only game created by a Chinese company with censorship issues. Released in 2024, Black Myth: Wukong, was released by Chinese video game company, Game Company. During the rollout, players and reviewers were urged not to talk about “feminist propaganda” or topics relating to COVID-19. 

The bigger issue is that Chinese game companies are practically immune to player pushback on censorship. Most of their revenue comes from mainland China, their main audience. The US and other countries are less of a priority when it comes to revenue and popularity. Since 2024, NetEase has slowly released over 900 employees from their North American branch of the company, even after the wildly successful release of Marvel Rivals. The company’s statement for these layoffs was that these employees were “no longer needed” after the release of the game, even though dozens of the workers were level designers, which are crucial to creating maps and environments for the game. Usually, players can boycott the game, as seen in 2019 when a player was banned and lost prize money when they made a statement at an Overwatch tournament saying, “Liberate Hong Kong.” After immense player pushback and boycotts, the parent company of the game, Blizzard, returned the prize money and shortened the ban. Overwatch 2 is Marvel Rivals’ closest competitor, as it is practically the same formula, just with different characters and slightly different game mechanics. Blizzard was forced to obey the player boycotts because most of their revenue was from the US and Europe. 

To some, censorship in video games is a small issue compared to the larger technical issues in other games, but it should be more carefully considered. Video games are not only a source of entertainment for some people, but they are also used as a social platform for connection with others, and limiting this with censorship can limit players’ abilities to connect with others.