PUBG News: Tencent Games replaces PUBG Mobile in China with a Toned-down Version "Game for Peace"

What’s the story?

Even as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds try to extricate themselves from bans for their mobile game in India, they seem to have taken things to another level in China to work their way around troubles for the ultra-popular game.

Instead of the regular version of PUBG Mobile, Tencent is replacing the game with its heavily censored and patriotic own version of the battle royale game, named Game for Peace.

In case you didn’t know…

PUBG seems to be having a tough time in Asia, with bans in various states of India getting them involved with the law in the country. In China, however, Tencent had waited over a year to gain permission to launch the game.

The company then announced that they were shutting down the test version of PUBG, and replace it with a game that had tweaks to work around the Chinese rules for games. Game for Peace will now have regulatory approval to generate revenue, says a report by Reuters.

The heart of the matter

On Weibo, the company announced that it had stopped testing for PUBG Mobile, instead launching the anti-terrorism themed Game for Peace. The game supposedly “pays tribute to the blue sky warriors that guard our country’s [China's] airspace,” but is in fact a rather comical clone of the high-voltage PUBG Mobile.

Due to recent government policy changes, PUBG mobile in China has been relaunched as an anti-terrorist themed game titled "Game for Peace", where defeated players don't die but simply wave their hands to say goodbye pic.twitter.com/DFNP74Wkh9

— Censored Gaming (@CensoredGaming_) May 9, 2019

In videos that have made their way to social media, the most stand-out feature of Game for Peace is that on being killed, the players don’t simply turn into crates any more; they sit up, wave goodbye and hand the killer the crate. Another important change is that there are green sparks that are emitted from players’ bodies on being shot, instead of blood.

The “paintball” effect is said to be to comply with China’s laws on games, where companies aren’t allowed to show blood.

Apart from these, what seems most interesting is that everything from the guns and attachment, as well as the topography of the locations in the game look the same as PUBG Mobile. In fact, gamers have asserted that they even started off in Game for Peace at the same level they were on PUBG.

Despite these similarities, Tencent claims that PUBG Mobile and Game for Peace belong to very different genres, and insists that it was made completely in-house.

What’s next?

The main reason why PUBG Mobile had to be pulled out of testing was that it didn’t have clearance for monetization, while Game for Peace was cleared back in April. This essentially means Tencent can finally make money off the latter game in China, which could be to the tune of 8 billion yuan to 10 billion yuan ($1.18 billion to $1.48 billion) in annual revenue, if analysts at China Renaissance are to be believed.

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