Mobile Game Content Standard (2016 Edition)

By Todd KuhnsLast Updated on May 24, 2016
Mobile Game Content Standard (2016 Edition)

Release Date: May 24, 2016

Source: China Audiovisual and Digital Publishing Association

Notice on Printing and Distributing “Mobile Game Content Standard (2016 Edition)”

Member units and related enterprises:

In order to cooperate with the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television to do a good job in the management of mobile game publishing services, the Association has formulated the “Mobile Game Content Standard (2016 Edition)”, which should be used as an important reference basis for mobile game development and publishing operation content review. For problems encountered during implementation, please report to the Association’s Game Publishing Working Committee in a timely manner.

Mobile Game Content Standard (2016 Edition)

Article 1 In order to guide the industry’s self-discipline, strengthen the construction of mobile game content, and promote the healthy and prosperous development of mobile game publishing, in accordance with relevant national laws, regulations and rules such as the “Regulations on the Administration of Publishing” and the “Regulations on the Administration of Online Publishing Services” and the “China Audiovisual and Digital Publishing Association” Articles of Association, this standard is created.

Article 2 The mobile games referred to in this standard refer to game works that use mobile smart devices such as mobile phones as the carrier and are available for public download or online interactive use through the internet.

The mobile game content referred to in this standard refers to the language, story background, plot scene (map), character modeling, prop equipment, music and sound effects, task functions, instructions, advertisements, etc. in mobile game works.

Article 3 Mobile games shall comply with the requirements of the “Notice on the Publication of” Healthy Game Advice” in Game Publications (New Voice [2003] No. 861), and the full text of the “Healthy Game Advice” shall be published in a prominent position on the game start screen.

Article 4 Mobile games shall be standardized in accordance with the provisions of the “National Law of the People ’s Republic of China”, the “Regulations on the Use of Chinese Characters in Publications”, and the “Notice on Further Regulating the Use of Publication Characters”.

Article 5 Mobile online games used online and interactively shall install harmful content filtering software to block the harmful content.

Article 6 Mobile games must not contain content that “opposes the basic principles established by the Constitution”, including but not limited to:

(I) Opposes the people’s democratic dictatorship; attacks, slanders, degrades, distorts, or disgraces China’s people’s congress system, election system, judicial system, regional ethnic autonomy and special administrative region system, military system, multi-party cooperation, and politics led by the Communist Party of China socialist systems such as the consultation system, the basic economic system, and the distribution system.

(2) Opposes the leadership of the Communist Party of China, attacking, slandering, demeaning, distorting, and vilifying the leadership’s position, ability, and the image of the Communist Party of China.

(3) Opposes the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics; and attacks, stigmatizes, degrades, distorts, or disgraces Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

Article 7 Mobile games must not contain content that “endangers national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity”, including but not limited to:

  1. Separating Taiwan, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Macao Special Administrative Region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Tibet Autonomous Region, Diaoyu Island, Chiwei Island, and the South China Sea Islands from the People’s Republic of China.
  2. Representing any region in China such as Taiwan, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Macau Special Administrative Region as a sovereign state.
  3. Omitting the quotation marks around the official institutions and titles of Taiwan’s local authorities after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, such as “Academia Sinica”, “Executive Yuan”, and “President”.
  4. Including the logo of the official agency of the Taiwan local authority after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
  5. Propaganda contents:

1. Distorting historical facts, preaching and beautifying the aggressors, deliberately rendering acts of aggression, and allowing the user to play the role of aggressors;

2. Fictitious foreign armed forces, organizations or individuals invading our territory, airspace, territorial waters, exclusive economic zone, continental shelf, and subsoil;

3. Foreign armed forces, organizations or individuals using any name, such as anti-terrorism, pursuit, etc., under the pretext of attacking any target on our territory or in our embassies or consulates abroad, or entering our country to engage in activities that violate our sovereignty.

(6) Expressing and describing foreign civil vessels, aircraft, etc. entering China’s territory, airspace, territorial waters, exclusive economic zone, continental shelf and subsoil without permission for development operations.

(7) Misrepresenting of the names of our territory, territorial airspace, territorial waters, exclusive economic zone, continental shelf, subsoil, and boundaries and areas that are disputed with other countries.

(8) The following types are declared as maps of China’s borders (fictional, similar, or other names that are not named China maps are excluded):

1. Maps marked as the national borders of the People’s Republic of China that have not been drawn in accordance with the border treaties, agreements, protocols and drawings signed between the People’s Republic of China and the neighboring countries concerned;

2. Maps that indicate the boundaries of the People ’s Republic of China that have not yet signed a border treaty with relevant neighboring countries and are not drawn in accordance with the standard sample maps of the People ’s Republic of China’s maps;

3. Maps marked as the historical boundaries of China, from 1840 to the founding of the People’s Republic of China, that were not drawn according to the standard sample maps of Chinese historical boundaries; before 1840, they were not drawn according to the actual historical boundaries;

4. Other content related to the boundaries of maps of China which violate relevant laws, regulations and policies.

Article 8 Mobile games must not contain content that “discloses state secrets, endangers national security, or harms national honor and interests”, including but not limited to:

(1) Involving the following confidential content:

1. Secret matters in major party and state affairs decisions;

2. Confidential maps and internal maps;

3. Secret matters involving national defense construction and armed forces;

4. Secret matters involving diplomatic and foreign affairs activities;

5. Secret matters in national economy, social development, and science and technology;

6. Secret matters in maintaining national security activities and tracing criminal offenses;

7. Other confidential content that cannot be made public according to relevant laws and regulations.

(2) Rendering, publicizing, beautifying, and praising various separatist forces, anti-China organizations, and spy agencies.

(3) Content that incites, instigates, and encourages any organization or individual to engage in any form of subversion of the Chinese government, division of the Chinese state, and endangering of China’s national security.

(4) Attacks, vilification, incineration, destruction, defilement, profanity, and other unflattering representations of China’s national flag, national anthem, national emblem, party flag, party emblem, military flag, military song, military emblem, Tiananmen, Great Hall of the People, Great Wall, and Huabiao Contents of symbols that symbolize China’s state, regime, army and nation.

(5) Content that attacks, derogations, vilifications, distortions, fabrications, and tampering with the history of our country, our party, our army, and its outstanding figures.

(6) Content that attacks, stigmatizes, vilifies, distorts, or damages the image of the political power, nation, party, leader, and military of other countries in violation of China’s foreign policy and international norms.

(7) Promotes fascism, beautifies the image of the war of aggression, the army and war criminals, and uses the aforementioned army or characters as optional roles.

Article 9 Mobile games must not contain content that “incites national hatred, national discrimination, undermines national unity, or violates national customs and habits”, including but not limited to:

(1) Fabricating, rendering, and exaggerating the contradictions, conflicts, and disputes among various ethnic groups.

(2) Defamating, insulting, vilifying, or distorting the image of various ethnic groups in China, such as in national characteristics and character images.

(3) Devaluing, distorting, or denying the history, status, role, contribution, and value of the Chinese nation.

(4) Promoting the dominance and privilege of a certain ethnic group or religion.

(5) Disrupting of national unity, religious harmony, and freedom of belief.

(6) Defaming, damaging, vilifying, and insulting the traditional customs, taboos, and national characteristics of the Chinese nation.

(7) Promoting foreign forces to undermine our national unity and interfere in religious affairs.

Article 10 Mobile games must not contain content that “promotes cults and superstitions”, including but not limited to:

(1) Promoting “Falungong” and other cult organizations that are hostile to the country, anti-government, and endangering society.

(2) Promoting “cult worship”, showing the portrait of the chief cult figures, and deifying chief cult leaders.

(3) Promoting cult teachings, doctrines, scriptures, classics, signs, etc.

(4) Promoting engaging in cult activities.

(5) Creating and spreading heresies, deception and deceiving others, and exercising mental control.

(6) Distorting or tampering with traditional religious teachings.

(7) Setting up functions such as fortune telling and supervising evil spirits.

(8) Using the banner of science to fabricate, exaggerate, and reproduce the phenomena of supermaterial and supernatural in real life.

Article 11 Mobile games must not contain content that “disrupts social order and disrupts social stability”, including but not limited to:

(1) With real social life as the game background, setting related functions or plots and propagating various activities that disrupt social order and disrupt social stability.

(2) Promoting the use of violence, threats and other means to resist and obstruct state officials from performing their official duties in accordance with the law.

(3) Maliciously vilifying or attacking a crowd or race in a specific area.

(4) Inducing users to invest directly or indirectly in fiat money to obtain game products or services by accidental methods such as random drawing without specifying detailed rules.

Article 12 Mobile games must not contain content that promotes obscenity, gambling, violence, or instigating crimes, including but not limited to:

(1) Content containing obscenity and pornography:

1. The process and details of performing incest, rape, gang rape, collective immorality, etc., or set related functions;

2. To express the sexual behavior of minors, or sexual behavior between adults and minors, or set related functions;

3. To express homosexual behavior or set related functions;

4. Specific sexual perversion or violence, abuse, insults related to sexual perversion, or set related functions

5. Concretely show the process and details of prostitution and prostitution, or set related functions;

6. Human nakedness and reproductive organs;

7. Animals’ reproductive organs;

8. Specific representation of sex objects or their functions;

9. Specific sexual behavior or suggestive sexual behavior and its voice;

10. Specific representation, description or teaching of sexual skills;

11. Specific representation and description of syphilis, gonorrhea, AIDS and other diseases related to sexual behavior;

12. Explicit language describing sexual transactions, sexual psychology, sexual behavior, sexual experience, etc.

13. Promote sexual openness and sexual freedom.

(2) Contents containing gambling:

1. Introduce specific forms of gambling and the methods and techniques of using gambling equipment;

2. Set up gambling functions and provide gambling services;

3. Collect or disguise commissions related to game wins and losses in the form of “virtual currency”;

4. Established the use of game points to win, lose, guess and other functions, without setting the user’s number of games per day and daily game points;

5. Provide services for game point transactions, exchange, or disguising exchange of cash and property in the form of “virtual currency”;

6. Provide game credit transfer services such as gifts and transfers between users.

(3) Contains content that promotes violence, terror, and cruelty:

1. Realistic portrayal, description of the incomplete or decomposed human body, etc., showing clear injury processes and scenes of blood spurting, blood flowing into the river, and blood flowing to the ground;

2. Deliberately performing acts that are contrary to common sense, such as exposing the body, dismembering the body, fork body, and corpse abuse;

3. Publicizing and advocating the roles and effects of weapons of mass destruction, biochemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and anti-human weapons, and deliberately render horror scenes of mass destruction;

4. Deliberately portraying and designing characters, images or scenes that are too scary.

Article 13 Mobile games must not contain content that “insults or slanders others, infringes upon the legal rights and interests of others”, including but not limited to:

(1) Maliciously mocking and insulting others with words or gestures and actions.

(2) Malicious use of names of political figures or social public figures or their homonyms.

(3) Deliberately portraying the physical and mental defects of others, infringing on the personal dignity of others.

(4) Spreading false facts that shame and damage the reputation of others.

(5) Illegal or disrespectful use of other people’s portraits, etc., infringing others’ right to portraiture.

(6) Spread the privacy of others and interfere with their private lives.

Article 14 Mobile games must not contain content that “endangers social morality or national excellent cultural traditions”, including but not limited to:

(1) Violating the basic moral requirements of loving the motherland, the people, labor, science, and socialism.

(2) Deliberately expressing dirty, vulgar, low-level, and indecent words and deeds such as brawls, swear words, and spitting.

(3) Occupation, damage, or destruction of cultural relics, places of interest, and historic sites, government offices, and landmark buildings in China.

(4) Mock, discriminate, insult women, children, the elderly, the disabled and other socially disadvantaged groups.

(5) Confusion between right and wrong, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, or other plots not conducive to the construction of a harmonious society.

(6) Promote corrupted and parasitic lifestyles such as the supremacy of money, extravagance, games of changing wives, extramarital affairs, one-night stands, caregivers, second wives, sugar daddies, etc.

(7) Promote the use of power for personal gain, power and money transactions, power and color transactions, etc.

(8) Trampling on the national outstanding cultural heritage and maliciously tampering with major historical and cultural events and representative figures.

(9) Promote patriarchal concepts, disrespect for men and women, polygamy, polyandry, etc.

(10) Weaken, denigrate, or deny the historical status and values of the excellent cultural traditions of the Chinese nation; vanish and vulgarize the excellent cultural traditions of the nation; and promote world views, historical views, and values ​​that are inconsistent with the excellent cultural traditions of the nation.

(11) To denigrate or deny the great national spirit of solidarity, peace-loving, hard-working, bravery and self-improvement with patriotism at its core.

Article 15 Mobile games must not contain content that induces minors to imitate violations of social morality, crimes and crimes, and content that harms the physical and mental health of minors, including but not limited to:

(1) Promoting violations of the law and crimes, including content that induces minors to imitate learning:

1. Detailed performance, description of criminal means, methods and details, and inducing or encouraging minors to imitate crimes;

2. Beautifying the image of the criminal, making it easy to cause minors to sympathize or appreciate the criminal;

3. Promoting the use of improper means to infringe upon state, collective and private property, such as playing the role of a thief, committing theft, deception, or robbery;

4. Showing offenders escaping legal sanctions and contempt of legal dignity, such as the establishment of money laundering, bribery, jail, etc .;

5. Propaganda or concrete manifestations of underworld-like organizations and their behaviors;

6. Instigating, inducing, and rewarding malicious PKs (“player kills”).

(2) Promoting drug use and drug trafficking, including content to induce minors to imitate learning:

1. Specific manifestations of the cultivation of original drug plants such as poppies;

2. Publicizing and concretely making, smuggling, transporting, selling, and buying drugs;

3. Publicizing or portraying/explaining the method or process of taking and injecting drugs; or seducing, soliciting, deceiving, or forcing others to take or inject drugs;

4. Publicizing and promoting the effects that drugs can bring;

5. Publicizing and concretely making money through drug trafficking.

(3) Promote other content that endangers the physical and mental health of minors:

1. Concentrating on the expression of vulgar content;

2. Specific behaviors of minors drinking or smoking, or tobacco props appearing in the game;

3. Specific portrayal of minors entering and leaving places that are not suitable for minors’ activities;

4. Encouraging minors to live together, get married, etc., which are not suitable actions for minors.

Article 16 Mobile games must not contain other content prohibited by national laws, regulations and rules.