China hasn't exactly been the easiest market to release games in, for various reasons, and now they've banned Plague Inc: Evolved on Steam.
For those who haven't played it Plague Inc: Evolved is a game where you create, spread and evolve a pathogen around the world. With the fear and curiosity around the deadly Coronavirus spread, recently a lot of people flocked to the game.
Why? You can customize your run, and with Steam Workshop support people were simulating the Coronavirus which exploded the popularity of the multiple-year old game. This is to the point where it hit close to twenty thousand people online at one point.
Seems China eventually took notice of this, so they've now banned it in their country. On Steam, the developer Ndemic Creations announced yesterday that Plague Inc. was removed because it "includes content that is illegal in China as determined by the Cyberspace Administration of China" with this being out of the control of the developer and there's not a lot they can do.
I will never understand the Chinese government and why they do things like this, they've been quite overzealous over games for a long time. That's the point though: it is just a game, it's not meant to be taken seriously but simulations like this can still help people learn and understand how things work. To the point that Ndemic themselves mentioned how "Plague Inc.’s educational importance has been repeatedly recognised by organisations like the CDC and we are currently working with major global health organisations to determine how we can best support their efforts to contain and control COVID-19".
Want to simulate your own pathogen? It's on Humble Store and Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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17 comments
One of the best way to encourage pirates... and rise sell for everyone else.
0 Likes
TheRiddick Mar 3, 2020
China is like a successful version of North Korea. However I don't think the Chinese people will stay obedient forever, cracks are forming as PRC's grip gets firmer.
1 Likes, Who?
This is why so many people are cautious about Chinese money being used in American companies.
A Chinese company (Tencent) owns so much of Epic Games right now, but Sweeney still holds the majority. But what happens if he leaves or dies? I’m guessing his shares go to Tencent.
Besides the lack of Linux support on Epic Games Store, I don’t want to spend real money on that platform due to multiple shady businesses practices. I tend to lean towards GOG these days instead.
A Chinese company (Tencent) owns so much of Epic Games right now, but Sweeney still holds the majority. But what happens if he leaves or dies? I’m guessing his shares go to Tencent.
Besides the lack of Linux support on Epic Games Store, I don’t want to spend real money on that platform due to multiple shady businesses practices. I tend to lean towards GOG these days instead.
2 Likes, Who?
It's a regime, regimes are very, very serious about themselves.
1 Likes, Who?
My country is totally not perfect, (well look at our politics' last week 'poop'storm). But throught my life, living across 5-6 prime ministers, across many colourful and dark history in my country. If looking back on many past outbreak like SARS, JE, H1N1, and many I don't remember; AFAIK, I'd never seen any "filtering" in the name to maintaining "stability and harmony" or calming down people. In fact, any "filtering" will add more fuel for chaos and instability, at least here.
(BTW, reccurring problems here mainly due is too slow to inform us news or updates due to some archaic breaucracy. Well, getting better thanks to social media, but the problem is still there.)
I know many leadership in many countries around the world will use "fake news" excuses to deny, to calm down and hell even to "filtered" unwanted infos all together. For me, telling the truth and trying as hard as possible to containing or fight this virus from spreading/harming us certainly makes me sleep better, IMO.
Hiding the truth makes anything getting worse.
(BTW, reccurring problems here mainly due is too slow to inform us news or updates due to some archaic breaucracy. Well, getting better thanks to social media, but the problem is still there.)
I know many leadership in many countries around the world will use "fake news" excuses to deny, to calm down and hell even to "filtered" unwanted infos all together. For me, telling the truth and trying as hard as possible to containing or fight this virus from spreading/harming us certainly makes me sleep better, IMO.
Hiding the truth makes anything getting worse.
2 Likes, Who?
Ndemic Creations should roll with this pathetic nonsense and use it in their advertising material. Put someone in a yellow teddybear suit with a red shirt playing the game in a trailer. What could go wrong? 
A game so brutal, the Chinese government outlawed it!
A game so brutal, the Chinese government outlawed it!
3 Likes, Who?
Kimyrielle Mar 3, 2020
China is like a successful version of North Korea. However I don't think the Chinese people will stay obedient forever, cracks are forming as PRC's grip gets firmer.
That's wishful thinking. People traditionally don't care about being oppressed as long as they have food on the table. And even if they don't have food, they stay calm as long as their government manages to lay the blame on someone else.
1 Likes, Who?
Kimyrielle Mar 3, 2020
True but it just prolongs the inevitable.
Again, wishful thinking. There is no historic evidence that democracy is the inevitable outcome of a nation's development and neither is there any evidence that democracies are intrinsically stable. Right now we're witnessing the -opposite-, rather. It's not authoritarian systems that are falling. It's the democratic ones that are converted back into more authoritarian systems.
7 Likes, Who?
To be fair with the chinese government, it seems that traditions and especially family pressure largely dwarf government pressure in the chinese society. I wouldn't be surprised if alleviation of that pressure was a goal of the government in quiet a number of cases.
OTOH, "a iron hand in a velvet glove" is very chinese thing. In other terms, the closer to the power you are, the more you will feel the iron, while the layman will feel (relatively) unaffected by the organisation of power.
You should also not make the mistake of taking the party for a monolithic hive mind under the direction of a petty idiot James Bond villain.
OTOH, "a iron hand in a velvet glove" is very chinese thing. In other terms, the closer to the power you are, the more you will feel the iron, while the layman will feel (relatively) unaffected by the organisation of power.
You should also not make the mistake of taking the party for a monolithic hive mind under the direction of a petty idiot James Bond villain.
0 Likes
Luke_Nukem Mar 3, 2020
"Cyberspace Administration of China"....
"Cyberspace"
CYBERSPACE ADMINISTRATION!
"Cyberspace"
CYBERSPACE ADMINISTRATION!
1 Likes, Who?
Well, they're an oligarchy. Although the current leader is centralizing things a bit more, the basic principle of Chinese government seems to be rule by the HR department. Please note that I'm not generally a fan of HR departments, so it's not like that's a compliment. But it comes naturally to China; it's a bit like an updated version of the old Chinese rule by a bureaucracy made of everyone who did well on the civil service exam (whether by talent or corruption). So like, the "Communist" party basically headhunt anyone who seems to them like the best & brightest & most conformist.I will never understand the Chinese government and why they do things like this
It's obvious, isn't it? They are a dictatorship
1 Likes, Who?
TheRiddick Mar 4, 2020
That's wishful thinking. People traditionally don't care about being oppressed as long as they have food on the table. And even if they don't have food, they stay calm as long as their government manages to lay the blame on someone else.
I don't think that is true at all given the history of empires. But I guess it all comes down to what color lenses you look at it from.
And to be very fair about the democracy argument, we have never seen it put into effect on planet Earth, LOADS of pseudo-democracy going on however! One just needs to look much closer at how elections are run and counted to know how true this is.
Sad truth is, our education systems have been butchered so much (people just not being educated due to financial situations or bad schooling) that the general public probably can't even make good decisions if voting systems were properly run like a democracy. Its a multi-lateral argument I can't go into here, would be a 400 page essay!
Last edited by TheRiddick on 4 March 2020 at 2:46 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Duck Hunt-Pr0 Mar 9, 2020
And to be very fair about the democracy argument, we have never seen it put into effect on planet Earth, LOADS of pseudo-democracy going on however!
Just out of curiosity and nothing more (im quite apolitical);
Could you please name the place, state and country, that you in your own words and personal opinion find to have the closest representation of _real_ democracy?
Not perfect democracy but the closest to such, as you see it, i mean.
Last edited by Duck Hunt-Pr0 on 9 March 2020 at 5:48 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Duck Hunt-Pr0 Mar 10, 2020
I'm starting to get a picture of how much chaos this coronavirus is going to bring... for starters, for us pc enthusiasts , all the hardware manufacturing plants will be paralized, they are all based in China. I hope they find an antiviral soon. this is starting to get really scary :| I already bought my antigas and organic filtering mask.😷
Blame government's lack of proactive respons for any potential chaos...Along with people's apparent egoism and seemingly apathy to the seriousness of it.
Unfortunately, the virus' (yes, there's apparently now two strains, -L and -S) can't be said now to have been the cause of any of that future chaos potentially occurring.
BTW: Blaming China as well, now, is rather silly IMHO. Pretty much just as dumb as having spotted a bowlingball coming rolling your way. Slowly, from a mile away. And yet still be pissing and moaning over it having managed to stubb your toe upon its arrival at your feet.
... But hey, Politics there needs be to it!
Last edited by Duck Hunt-Pr0 on 10 March 2020 at 1:30 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
I was just reading an article about that... potentially there is 1.7 million of unknown viruses around the world, mostly of animal species that we don't know
It's scary. The most serious virus has gone a little under the radar actually, despite wreaking havoc on countless species and the eco system for years.
The human.
Last edited by Pangaea on 10 March 2020 at 6:45 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
I'm concerned about the arctic permafrost thawing, like the Siberia tundra. That's been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years. Besides the incomprehensibly vast amount of carbon dioxide about be released, what else might be sleeping beneath the ice? :S:
(Plenty of tacky sci-fi/horror movies with that theme around.)
(Plenty of tacky sci-fi/horror movies with that theme around.)
2 Likes, Who?
I'm concerned about the arctic permafrost thawing, like the Siberia tundra. That's been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years. Besides the incomprehensibly vast amount of carbon dioxide about be released, what else might be sleeping beneath the ice? :S:Many years ago didn't they find a frozen mammoth carcass? They actually tried eating the thing. It was awful; I guess after all those years it had wicked freezer burn.
(Plenty of tacky sci-fi/horror movies with that theme around.)
2 Likes, Who?
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