[AMA] Chinese here. Just saw recent Chinese players review bombing

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I had spent 1000+ hours on hoi4, also I play hoi3 a bit(really hope Paradox could combine hoi4 and 3 lol)

Just saw recent Chinese players review bombing, and I’m not surprised to see the Chinese players bombed the review on steam.

I want to know how to explain to people not famliar with China, so I post this AMA. I need your questions to help me.

Some questions u might have, and u could ask the same question if u want to know more:

Q: Why they didin’t bomb hoi4 instead?

A: There is a region lock on Steam, so they can’t visit the store page of hoi4.

So most Chinese players bought hoi4 by product codes (once u have the base game, u could buy DLCs even with region lock.

(Simiair thing happened recently, some Chinese players bombed Baldur’s Gate 3 on steam due to Astro bot was given TGA)

Q: Why hoi4 is banned in China?

A: 1, I think Chinese governor are Machiavellianism to some extend. About games they would think control over the population.

2, It’s easy for the governor to ban anything, decisions are made based on people, not rules.

update: Some think it’s the cores about Japan/Taiwan etc. got hoi4 banned. I would say these doesn’t matter. If we take the way opposite, I can’t imagine any democracy regime like usa/Japan/Taiwan would ban a game for not coring its “tertiary” in ww2.

Q: How is Chinese paradox commiunities like?

A: There are large commiunities like Tieba(forum), Bilibli(Video)

(hoi4 has region lock on Steam but it’s avalaible on commiunities, eu4 on the opposite side, banned on Bilibli but avalaible on Steam )

There is this toboo that any “politics” discussion in the game commiunities is extremely stricted

When eu4 was banned, many of them would blame poeple who discussed “politics” in the commiunities, not the governor who did the ban.

(Double quotation here beucase I think in totalitarian society, politics are every aspect of life )

Q: What are those Chinese players angry about?

A: I think most of them are angry because of ‘double standards’ plus sth like Paradox didn’t give China cores on Tibet. (sry I give short answer because I think the reason behind the anger is boring)

Many Chinese have this cold war mindset that the east and the west are opposing to each other. a zero-sum game, Forein Countries are either enermies or fridends.

And they would assume anything from western is hostile to China. “Guilty until proven innocent”

Q: What do I think about the India Dev?

A: I’m just not interested in this. I would rather see those reasons as political correctness.

I think my thoughts could only represent like 5% of Chinese players.

ps: I won’t answer personal privacy questions

edit: (just found out I can’t pin my conment so I put it here)

Thanks guys for ur comments. first time AMA :slight_smile:

This reply from me in the post:

‘Many Chineses would assume foreigners have prejudice on China, so many tiny things will lead to an easy conclusion that foreigners have prejudice on China’

The more I view things with bias, the deeper my bias becomes, I ofen forgets it, so I need to remind myself, conversion is the best way out.

Some additional thoughts:

I also want to give a little thanks to Paradox games for helping me develop some critical thinking skills.

I remember when I play the game, I play as a nation I think as a nation.

When considering about the same thing, I tried thinking as a nation, and thinking as myself

These two diffenrent thinking minds bring paradox

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I heard it was a combination of Japan owning Taiwan, Sinkiang being independent (even if as a warlord), Tibet being independent, and Manchukuo being (semi) independent

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Ask you anything? What you had for yesterday breakfast

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Well, I think the answer is mostly correct and introduced many facts that people are not familiar with. I just bring three more facts and probably people could understand this issue better:

(1) China has a huge population, and to be honest, young Chinese are easy to get angry and take offensive altitude immediately (not comparing to any other nations). I am not sure how many Chinese players downvote the game though, I just know a lot HOI 4 Chinese players are not interested in taking the internet fights and still play this game. I would like to guess that less than 30% Chinese players have review bombed (well, maybe my guess is wrong).

(2) Chinese are still in PTSD of World War II. In addition, the majority of Chinese are not confident that the country is strong enough that can avoid humiliation in the future. Though the youngest generation is more confident, the older people are still worrying being invaded and 20M people get killed. One possible cause is that, the country was under war threat of USSR until the dissolution, and almost directly went into intensive relationship with US in 1990s. Frankly speaking, Chinese are still in a war-preparing mood, so does the country (I hope I am wrong here).

(3) Chinese are not familiar with the internet jokes, and how the foreigners talk to them. Well, if they take the Taiwan/Tibet/Xinjiang jokes, and the “Chinese eat dog” jokes everyday, just like the Chinese international students in America, probably they can calm down a lot. In China, it’s really hard to know that almost all the rest world blames China for some reasons, let alone that it’s just like how they blame US.

Back to the AMA, just wonder what’s your opinion whether the WW III will come in the next 20 years or not…

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Clarification:

I don’t mean to support those jokes in (3), and I feel bad for the internet full of toxic contents and comments. I just want to point out that the Chinese are not aware of that the international internet is full of the toxic contents and comments, not only targeting at Chinese, but also any other nation’s people.

Well, the only correct way seems to be just ignoring those toxic contents, which are created only to make the targeted people angry. Ironically, the internet was invented for the exchange of knowledge and information.

Let me do more meaningful things instead of taking internet fights. Wish the people who read my response, have a good day.

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I also read that the alt-path initially triggered limited response from Chinese Community. The powder keg was set off after a Chinese player from the community uploaded a satirical mod to Workshop, which was then taken down by PDX mod., and some other Chinese player later reuploaded it and received a takedown+ban treatment, so the situation evolved into a double standard issue like “PDX can do cringey stuff to troll the community but the community isn’t allowed to reciprocate”.

Then the situation got messier when some ppl started to bring up the old coring thingy which has been a longstanding issue inside the Chinese community but ppl have been like “Oh no, whatever”.

Quite frankly I think the problem is more about PDX’s community policy combined with China’s Internet culture rather then the content itself. If my impression isn’t obsolete, PDX haven’t seemed receptive to negative reactions from the community especially on their own forum. It also happens that Chinese Internet doesn’t have the tradition of trying to care about OP’s feelings so when u post something, ppl just assume that you put it there for all kind of responses and they won’t refrain from making negative comments when they want to. And if you proceed to take those down ppl will think you’re just a loser and double down on the negativities to “teach you how the Internet works” like “if you don’t like being judged, why did you even post in the first place?”.

That also perhaps because Silk Road historically ends at Chang’an. Chinese Internet has little tolerance for stupidities except when the person in question has especified that they have intellectual disabilities. If you possess a set of knowledge and satirise part of it, it becomes a meme or a reference. Ppl will recognise your community identity and appreciate your meme at its joke value. However if your post shows that you were memeing without proper knowledge ppl will not recognise the meme value of your post because you are not one of them. And they will then take it at its literal face value and proceed to judge you, which is probably another cause of this debacle.

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EU4 has been unbanned by Bilibili.

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Glad I left Chinese community since the KR core things years ago, best decision ever. It’s toxic as hell compared to English one

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老哥，我看贴吧都快内战了，感觉国内钢铁雄心社区这样下去要完蛋啊

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Personally ever since I played online with a PRC Chinese player I’d have to say that the reason the PRC has banned HOI4 Is because it doesnt fit the state narrative spread by the CCP, so they’ve obviously banned it. Its not the first time china would’ve banned something because it didnt agree with it.

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Thanks guys for ur comments. first time AMA :slight_smile:

This reply from me in the post:

‘Many Chineses would assume foreigners have prejudice on China, so many tiny things will lead to an easy conclusion that foreigners have prejudice on China’

The more I view things with bias, the deeper my bias becomes, I ofen forgets it, so I need to remind myself, conversion is the best way out.

Some additional thoughts:

I also want to give a little thanks to Paradox games for helping me develop some critical thinking skills.

I remember when I play the game, I play as a nation I think as a nation.

When considering about the same thing, I tried thinking as a nation, and thinking as myself

These two diffenrent thinking minds bring paradox

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Are you mainland chinese? If so how ate you even posting here

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I have a question, do you think there should be a way for China to core Tibet?

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中国人在对外维权方面展现出神经一样的疯狂，而对自己本国的工厂压榨，欠薪，房地产问题，政府政策，习近平，政府官员的一些方面完全是当作放屁，充耳不闻. 形成了显著的对比.

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AMA? well tell me what was the last thing you ate

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I heard it was because HOI4 recognized Taiwan

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What’s opinion about the horrendous supply outside of the coastal areas?

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Since I can ask you anything, what are your opinions on the Austrian Netherlands (modern day Belgium)

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What’s your opinion on the silk road formable?

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bg3 crusade was due to the larian speech at the end of tga.

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Politics are every aspect of life, regardless of society :slight_smile: