Diablo 3 Multiplayer to Feature Global Play, Mainland China Left Out?

Diablo 3 developer Blizzard has announced a “global play” feature for that game’s multiplayer that will allow players to compete with gamers across their continent, not just in their own country. According to Digital Spy:

The Americas region will include the US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. The Europe region will include the European Union, Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, and Middle Eastern countries such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The Asia region will include South Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Notice that mainland China is nowhere to be found on that list. That’s probably because the game still doesn’t have an official China release date, but the announcement of this news begs the question: when the game is released here, will Chinese gamers be allowed to mingle with the rest of Asia in the global play multiplayer? Or will they be sequestered on their own servers, as in past Blizzard games?

My instinct is that they will likely be sequestered, for a number of reasons. The first is that China’s regulatory environment is extremely complex, and it may be difficult to even obtain the proper licenses. Of course, there’s also the question of censorship; China’s government isn’t a big fan of gore and horror, and past China operators of Blizzard games have chosen to remove certain elements — like skeletons — from games to facilitate the games passing muster here. Diablo 3 is full of supernatural horror elements, and it’s likely that Netease will have to make some changes to the game before it can be released here. Those changes might make it difficult or impossible to integrate players in China and in other countries, where the game will be released uncensored.

Perhaps more significant, though, is the potential of Diablo 3 as a communication tool. If Chinese gamers were allowed to play freely with gamers across Asia, they likely spend time conversing with players in Hong Kong and Taiwan, who speak Chinese and have access to news and information that is censored domestically. It’s hard to imagine much trouble could really come from this — Diablo 3 is not going to give rise to a Nerd Spring in China — but that doesn’t mean that Netease and the Chinese government won’t feel uncomfortable with the idea of Chinese gamers chatting freely with people from countries where news is less tightly controlled.

In any event, we’ll have to wait and see. It’s still not clear when Chinese gamers can even get their hands on the game itself; what their multiplayer experience will look like when they do is probably still up in the air.