Shanghai-based miHoYo, the developer of fantasy roleplaying game Genshin Impact, is under fire for censoring interuser chats and nicknames for politically sensitive terms.
Words including "Taiwan," "Tibet," "Falun Gong," "Hong Kong" and "Putin" are automatically replaced with asterisks, according to users inside and outside China, as mainland authorities crackdown on dissidents.
The allegations of censorship prompted noted gamer Kazuma Hashimoto, who goes by the name JusticeKazzy on online streaming site Twitch, to stop playing or discussing Genshin Impact.
"I am just one person out of a million, but I cannot use my platform to talk about a game that has these kinds of censors in place," Hashimoto tweeted this week. "That doesn't fall in line with my morals."
Genshin Impact was beta launched in 2019. An international following has since grown. Players are travelers in a foreign virtual land searching for a missing sibling and having adventures.
Game users first raised the censorship issue this week in online community forums. "Has anyone else experienced this bug?" a gamer asked on Reddit, complaining that requests to add banned words to their user nicknames went unprocessed.
Not all Genshin Impact fans are sympathetic. "If you can't accept the patriotism of China companies then don't play their game. It's that simple," a user said.
China's censors are being kept busy by game developers this year. In April, Nintendo's Animal Crossing was taken off the shelves and websites of China retailers after Hong Kong activists used the game to share messages.
Two months later, another game was banned on the mainland after authorities discovered a prodemocracy slogan hidden in the coding.
