China calls bullshit: headlines that angered Chinese gamers this year

The past six months have been tough for some Chinese gamers—with cancellations, misunderstandings, and shaky rumours leading to bitter disappointment. Below are the five that have hit home the hardest in China this year so far.

• Monster Hunter Online 2

Since the death of the Playstation Portable, Monster Hunter Online has become China’s preferred way to get its hunt on.

The rumour first broke when a job posting at a Capcom subsidiary in South Korea was reported to include confirmation of Monster Hunter Online 2. The rumor was quickly quashed when Capcom claimed that the job postings were in fact for Monster Hunter Frontier G.

(See: Gamers can vote for a new Monster Hunter Online monster at ChinaJoy)

Although this appears to have been an innocent mistake, it still left a bitter taste in many people’s mouths. One editor at Duowan took the opportunity to lash out at Capcom, saying he felt like everyone was thinking that “Capcom… just lazily exploit the same franchises, using overseas companies and squeezing out Monster Hunter, Street Fighter, and Onimusha games.” In the West, that latter entry might come as a bit of a surprise—wasn’t the last Onimusha game for PS2? But the browser game Onimusha Soul has been going strong in Asia since 2012, receiving a Playstation 3 port earlier this year, even if it remains mostly alien to Western audiences. “They’re just resting on their laurels,” the editor remarked, “…disgusting.”

• TERA 2

TERA is new enough that many Chinese gamers have yet to try it out—would a sequel so soon really be necessary anyway?

Korean media outlets believed they had a scoop when they reported that a sequel to TERA, tentatively titled TERA 2, would release later in 2014. Details were unclear as to how exactly this new game would differ from the first. However, when the CEO of TERA developer Bluehole Studio Kim Gang-Seok spoke to the Chinese media in recent weeks, he firmly denied the development of a sequel to TERA: “At this time, Bluehole Studio has no plans at all for a TERA sequel.”

Instead, he stated, Bluehole Studio was “in the middle of developing two new projects, with the working titles Project W and Project EXA. These titles will be western fantasy themed like TERA, but won’t be the same at all in terms of style and gameplay.” Here, Chinese media sources were more upbeat: “From the tiny clues Bluehole Studio’s CEO let slip, they’re not just doing a retread—which is getting people’s hopes up, even though we don’t know exactly what kind of gameplay innovations they’re working on.”

• Torchlight 3

More Diablo than Diablo? Chinese gamers seem to think so.