No more hunting for you
China’s government is notoriously picky with what products go on sale in the country. This has led to numerous instances where incredibly popular games had to be massively censored to even see release, but I don’t think I’ve heard of a case where a game goes on sale for a week before getting pulled. Monster Hunter: World has been lighting up the PC scene since its release, but it looks like our overseas brethren in China won’t be able to legally acquire the title for the foreseeable future.
Chinese regulators have demanded that Tencent pull Capcom’s massively popular multiplayer hunting game from the WeGame platform after receiving “a large number of complaints” regarding the game’s content. The likely culprit for this is the persistence of corpses in game, which happens after you kill a monster and are given a chance to loot it.
Speaking to outlet MorningStar, an unnamed Chinese analyst said regulators in the country are known to frown upon overly violent content. Why this wasn’t brought up before release is anyone’s guess, but whatever is causing the issue is bad enough to fully remove it from sale.
Players in the region will have until August 20 to apply for a refund, after which the game will be removed from WeGame. Owners can also opt to keep the game in their library, though it seems unlikely that the current version will remain operable for much longer. What is likely to happen is that a new, censored version will come back to the platform and replace the current one.
China Pulls Plug on Tencent Videogame Days After Launch [MorningStar]
Monster Hunter: World removed from sale in China [PC Gamer]
