Det er ikke helt let at være kinesisk online-gamer og det er bestemt ikke blevet lettere det seneste år. Efter hele balladen med The9, som førte til måneders suspendering af World of Warcraft i Kina, har NetEase taget over driften. De er dog løbet ind i en mur af lokalpolitisk ballade på grund af den stadig mere strikse kinesiske regler for online-gaming. Gamesindustry.biz bidrager i dag med et ganske godt overblik over de seneste kvaler (Reuters), hvor NetEase har måtte suspendere nye registreringer til World of Warcraft. Man skal være villig til at sluge enddog meget store kameler, hvis man vil adgang til det lukrative kinesiske marked.

New user registrations would be halted for a week from Monday in the run-up to the Lunar New Year holiday, the company said in a statement posted on its WoW China website, www.warcraftchina.com on Sunday.

“We recently submitted our application to operate World of Warcraft (The Burning Crusade) to the General Administration of Press and Publication for review,” the company said.

Since last November, NetEase has been caught in the crossfire of an inter-government feud over regulation of the online game space.

The tussle resulted in China’s General Administration of Press and Publication returning NetEase’s application to operate the WoW expansion pack, ordering the company to stop charging users to play the game and disallowing new account registrations citing “gross violations” of regulations. But NetEase continued to operate the game as usual saying it was in compliance with local laws.

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