China pulls plug on Tencent video game days after launch
Regulators cancelled license for Monster Hunter: World, citing content complaints
BEIJING—Chinese regulators have blocked sales of a Tencent Holdings Ltd. video game where players hunted fearsome creatures, the company said Monday, in the latest setback to its PC games business.
The tech giant pulled “Monster Hunter: World” off its WeGame distribution platform after Chinese regulators canceled the game’s operating license, citing “a large number of complaints” about the game’s content, Tencent said.
Tencent didn’t detail why the game’s content was flagged, and didn’t respond to a request for comment.
One analyst said Chinese regulators, known to disapprove of overly violent content, might have objected to the game’s depiction of corpses. Gamers roleplay as hunters tracking and killing dangerous creatures through exotic lands.
China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Tencent sold the game through WeGame, an online platform where users can access and buy PC games for sale. “Monster Hunter: World” was sold for 299
yuan (about $44) for a standard version and 358 yuan for the deluxe edition.
“Monster Hunter: World” was expected to be a blockbuster for Tencent, which licensed the game from Japanese game developer Capcom Co.
Before its launch on WeGame last week, Tencent had already received more than one million preorders, WeGame said in a July statement.
The company said it would provide refunds for Chinese customers who bought the game.
Tencent shares fell 2.4% in trading in Hong Kong on Monday. The company reports second-quarter earnings Wednesday.
The setback comes at a bad time for Tencent, which has already been struggling with stagnant PC games sales, said Chenyu Cui, a senior research analyst at IHS Markit. Its PC game sales were flat in the first quarter compared with the same period a year ago.
It is also a setback for Tencent’s expansion plans for its WeGame platform. The company is planning to debut an international version of WeGame in Hong Kong, which will compete directly with Steam, the U.S.based PC games platform that has millions of Chinese users, Ms. Cui said. Monster Hunter was the first time that a popular game launched on WeGame and Steam at the same time, she said.
“Previously the games available on WeGame were kind of old-fashioned titles,” Ms. Cui said. “Now the game has been put off, so Tencent might lose its good timing to compete.”
Other games from Tencent have also run into regulatory problems, and its second-quarter earnings may be weighed down by the company’s troubles making money from two mobile versions of an extremely popular PC game called “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.”
In 2017, Tencent licensed the rights to PUBG, as it is known to fans, from South Korean developer Bluehole Inc. and then rolled out the free mobile games earlier this year. But China’s media regulator has yet to approve the games for in-game purchases.