It’s looking like China isn’t happy with the custom content in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
China has reportedly stopped sales of Animal Crossing: New Horizons as new features might be triggering their censorship laws. During the late hours of April 9, the order was delivered through the e-commerce website Taobao. It was said for this to take effect on April 10. The screenshots that went viral on social media made claims that all products related to the Nintendo game are all subject to the ban. But, reportedly, it hasn’t affected the console sales.
Whilst Nintendo had partnered with the Chinese media giant, Tencent, and launched a licensed console for the Chinese market, the two had yet to bring Animal Crossing to China. This includes some other top-grossing games as well, such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Chinese gamers have been playing these games, however, with a parallel imported Switch console that were most-likely sold by third-party sellers.
It’s speculated that the ban came into effect after gamers were found using a pattern creation feature. This feature within Animal Crossing: New Horizons allows gamers to draw and share materials. It’s then thought that images that are sensitive to the Chinese internet were created and shared. Some of these images including political slogans and images of senior leaders.
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Even though Animal Crossing has been localized in Chinese and is available for all gamers around the world to play, a Chinese region-specific version of the game is still unknown and widely speculated. Local gamers are worrying about a version of this game being released, as certain features within the game might disappear.
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