China Replaces PUBG With Bizarre, Propaganda-Filled Clone

One player said "I'm going to die of laughter."

Pea Shooter

Chinese game developer Tencent just tried to pull off an incredibly bold sleight-of-hand trick — with laughable results.

At roughly the same time blockbuster battle royale shooter Public Unknown's Battle Grounds, better known as PUBG, suddenly disappeared for tens of millions of Chinese gamers, a new near-carbon copy of the game was announced called "Game for Peace."

But while the government-friendly Game for Peace shares plenty of similarities with PUBG, it sounds like a bowdlerized propaganda piece.

"I’m going to die of laughter,” a Weibo user said of the game, according to Reuters. "When you shoot people, they don’t bleed, and the dead get up and wave goodbye!"

Opium of the People

The news shows how the Chinese government sees potential in pushing its ideology through video games. Last month, China introduced strict video game rules, outlawing gambling and excessive violence.

Tencent is trying to position "Game of Peace" as an entirely new game, despite of the fact that Chinese gamers will be able to port over characters from PUBG. The company told Reuters, though, that "they are very different genres of games."

Game for Peace replaces one of the most successful video games in recent history — and perhaps in the history of video games as a whole. In December 2017, PUBG set a new record for the most simultaneous players.

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