Allods Online is a free-to-play MMORPG that was developed in Russia but has since been distributed across the world, including throughout Asia. Although it has not been officially released in China, Giant Interactive (NYSE:GA) was slated to do the honors and had been operating an open beta prior to the game’s official release here.
But all that may be in jeopardy now. The game’s official site has been closed, and industry insiders have told CCID that Giant failed to clear the game with China’s censors before launching the open beta. The game’s violent content apparently ran afoul of someone, somewhere, and now there are questions as to whether the game will be released at all. Although the cause of the beta shutdown hasn’t been publicly announced, there are also apparently problems with the game beyond the blood and guts. Some gamers have speculated that part of the problem is that the game also permits same-sex marriage between players. Gay marriage is not legal in China.
We attempted to contact Giant Interactive to confirm this story, but the company’s publicly listed media contact address seems to be broken. We will update this story if we are able to get in touch with Giant.
Of course, this isn’t the first time censorship has interfered with a video game launch. Most memorably World of Warcraft‘s “Burning Crusade” expansion was shut down by censors while objectionable content was excised or replaced. Whether that’s what’s happening to Allods Online isn’t entirely clear yet. If gay marriage is really part of the reason for the censorship, I feel obliged to state for the record that I think that’s utterly ridiculous. But we don’t yet know if that was actually one of the reasons for the Allods shutdown, and given how opaque China’s censorship apparatus is, we probably never will.
[CCID via Sina Tech]
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