China bans blood, poker and imperial history in latest video game crackdown

As anyone following the weird and wacky world of video game regulation will know, the games industry hasn't been having the best year in China. After temporarily freezing game approvals and blaming games for causing eyesight problems, the Chinese government chose to restrict playtime for kids, even using police databases to enforce the rules.

At long last, the approvals freeze has finally been replaced with a new process, but fewer games will be approved - and titles with pools of blood, corpses, gambling and imperial schemes will no longer be given licences.

As detailed in the new approval process guidelines (via Gizmodo), games with corpses and pools of blood of any colour will no longer be accepted. This means developers can't simply change the colour to get around the problems, so if you were expecting rainbow fountains in Mortal Kombat 11, you're going to be disappointed.

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