GAPP: World of Warcraft Too Bloody, Too Violent
Oriental Outlook, 8/26/09
Song Jianxin, director the office of online publishing management within the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP)'s department of technology and digital publishing, has said that a panel of experts discovered violent, gory and disturbing content in Netease’s (Nasdaq: NTES) version of World of Warcraft now under review. The content was found to be hazardous to minors' mental health, contains detailed descriptions of how to manufacture deadly biological weapons and could induce youth to imitate dangerous and illegal behavior.
Song emphasized the cultural differences in ideas and ideology found in WoW. He added that Eastern cultures could not directly import Westernized games without making some alterations.
Netease does not possess the source code to the game, so to make the necessary changes would require game developer Blizzard to dispatch programmers to do so. Song believes it would be difficult for Netease to help Blizzard fully comprehend the required changes.
WoW was submitted for approval in late June, and GAPP responded in July with a list of problems and required modifications. Song said that administrative policy for the importation of any foreign games gives 20 working days for examination and 60 days for content evaluation.
Keywords: online gaming MMORPG Blizzard WoW game developer Netease content Internet policy youth GAPP NTES
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