Battlefield 4 banned in China

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[dropcap]E[/dropcap]lectronic Art’s latest instalment in the first-person shooter series Battlefield, Battlefield 4, has been banned from being sold in China.
The game, released in October, is set six years after the events of its predecessor, Battlefield 3, and is based on a fictional war in China, headed by Admiral Chang who plans to overthrow China’s current government. As tensions between Russia and the United States rise, Russia joins alongside China to battle the US.
Earlier this month, it was reported by news outlets that China was upset with the way their country was portrayed within the video game. Chinese media accused EA of smearing the image of China. The South China Morning Post criticised the game for “discrediting China’s image abroad and distorting the truth in an effort to mislead young people”. They claimed the plot “made no sense” and was filled with profanity.
The piece read: “When western countries would make war games in the past, they would settle on Russia if they needed an imaginary enemy. But in recent years, with the boosting of China’s national strength, China threat theories run rampant, and foreign companies are increasingly keen to put the Sino-US conflict in their games as a gimmick to attract attention.”
Now the game has been banned from being sold in China by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and any copies of the game currently in stock will be removed from store shelves and all China-based online sales websites. For people living in China who have already downloaded the game, they will no longer be able to access any online content and have been told to delete their game from their consoles.
The Chinese Ministry of Culture have ridiculously called the game “an illegal game, with content that endangers national security” despite the game being set in the future and telling a fictional story.
We’ve reached out to EA for comment – so far, no word back.
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