According to Ars Technica, the Chinese Ministry of Culture has announced that Chinese gamers will no longer be able to play or access video games that “promote the glorification of mafia life.” This comes on the heels of the announcement that Chinese Gamers will now need to register their personal information in order to play a video game, so that parents will be able to track play-times and monitor their kids. Games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, and any others that promote foul language, drugs, vandalism, theft, sexual assault, and other various crimes will be targeted.Below is an exerpt of the article from Ars Technica:

China has always been concerned about youngsters playing video games, not only because of the questionable content in them, but also because of the possibility of addiction. Earlier this year, online gamers in China had to begin registering with their personal information in order to play MMOs—the requirement applies to both young and old gamers, although part of the reason for the system is to allow parents to check up on how much gaming their children are doing. The Ministry, as is its custom, did not specify how it plans to enforce this latest directive, but left the details up to other areas of government to decide. Given the government’s somewhat random enforcement of the country’s anti-porn efforts, we can probably expect there to be various filters set up that will only work in certain areas with certain types of games while law enforcement works to get the others (that are based in China, anyway) shut down completely. Oh, and don’t forget: China is getting on Google’s back for allowing users to search for video games with questionable content, even though it’s virtually impossible to stop an automated search engine from indexing new sites as they pop up.

Source: Ars Technica