Chinese regulator blocks sales of Monster Hunter: World

A Chinese regulator has blocked the sale of the game Monster Hunter: World. As a result, the license in China has expired. Publisher Tencent has pulled the title from the WeGame platform as a result.

Tencent says that Chinese regulators have received a “large number of complaints” about the content of the game, reports The Wall Street Journal, among others. The publisher has not provided any further details as to why certain content in the game may not be acceptable, nor has it responded to a request for comment.

If it actually concerns a lot of complaints from users, then they are probably about the relatively high level of violent content or at least about how it appears. For example, the Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, a supervisory organization in China, is known to lose their license for games that are too violent. Such a scenario also threatens PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which would be too bloody and violent. With Monster Hunter: World there may be objections about how corpses are depicted.

The Financial Times reports that a source with knowledge of what’s going on at WeGame has said that the removal of Monster Hunter: World is not so much due to user complaints. It would mainly be a result of bureaucracy at the newly established Chinese media regulator in March. Its creation would have led to significant delays in the approval processes for several mobile games.

Monster Hunter: World was released worldwide on Thursday and Tencent had already received a million pre-orders on WeGame, the online game platform of the Chinese internet giant. Chinese customers who have already placed an order will get their money back.