Asmongold TV - They censored everything.. | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: September 6, 2025

They censored everything.. Asmongold podcast for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ------------------------------ ----------- Keywords: game criticism, asmongold, world of warcraft, streaming highlights, gaming drama, reaction videos, gaming takes, gaming culture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is one of the biggest examples of censorship that's happened in a video game in a long time. I read this article and honestly, I feel like this is, if it's what I recall, I feel like we're using words in a very clickbaity fashion, but I'll explain what I mean. Because it's described as Wu Chang Fallen Feathers fans celebrate owning the disc after controversial updates censors the game. And when I think censorship in the context of video games, I think of like, you know, you had a character that was talented and then you cover up the talent. Yeah, sure. I feel like you are, you have maybe something in your game that just swings low sweet chariots with quality. Good one. And then you pin up the quality.

You know, you know what I mean? You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, you get what I'm saying? You're picking up what I'm stepping in. Sure. same. Peter has a beard. Also, thank you for the sub over on Twitch. Thank you by everyone. But this apparently is not that at all. It's been called a lot of things. Sol, Slop, Gooner, Bate, a surprisingly good game. You can now add censored, quote, unquote,

to the list after the recent 1.5 update, make controversial changes to the game, similarly to quell backlash from some fans in China. There's one thing, though, you want to talk about Australian Cairns. Australian Cairns are nothing next to Chinese audiences. Chinese audiences are extremely sensitive to video games that misrepresent their culture in any way. Yeah, they get very, very upset about that. Diehard fans are now relieved. They bought the game on disc knowing they can always access

the original version of the action game that released last month. What did they do? Did they cover everybody up in burlap? What happened? Well, the newest patch arrived earlier this week and made a bunch of changes, most of which seemed innocuous enough. Some were enthusiastically welcomed,

like a sped-up healing animation. This was very fucking needed. Holy shit, it was needed. Oh, my God. Like, healing in this game was worse than Dark Souls 2 with zero adaptation. It was so bad.

It's a good thing to have. The ability to cancel out of recovery animation by dodging. That's a good thing to have. Improved eye frames when recovering from getting knocked down. That's also cool. tightening up the combat and stuff like that.

I love that. Other changes were more ominous than they first appeared, though. Quote, added dialogues for some NPC to complete some plots. Yes. Okay. Not sure what that means. We will further optimize the exhaustion animations in the future to improve the plot performance. Okay.

Okay. Not sure what that means. What did they mean by this? What was developer Lean Z talking about? Well, it soon became clear, as shared on social media by Souls Officiata. and early advocate for Woodchang Lance McDonald. Quote, what they mean is they made it so you can no longer kill any historically significant bosses or NPCs.

They changed it. So any historically significant bosses or NPCs can't be killed. Now they just get exhausted and like relax after the fight and talk to you. So it goes farther than that actually. So also any of the NPCs that you would be fighting. traditionally, many of them were made to no longer be attackable. Like you used to be able to kill like these little villagers that would be cowering and running away from you.

Now you can't kill them. And there's also these like soldiers in armor that you also can't kill either. And also like it's big enough to where it actually does affect the actual gameplay. Because I beat the game once before any of this patch came out. And then I beat the game on new game plus, or I almost beat the game on new game plus. And it was a pretty big change in terms of difficulty and the complexity of different routes. Should be allowed to refund? I think they should just add in different NPCs.

Just take those NPCs out and just put new ones in. Yeah, it changes the story? Yeah, definitely. Why are they killing their own historic figures, though? Sounds like a personal problem. Just because you need catch it doesn't mean you should. I mean, I think that it's a, it's a story. story, right? I mean, like, that's really what is. It's a, it's a fantasy story. It's not real.

I'm guessing this is like in, in Starfield when you try to kill like a quest giver and they just drop to all fours and like, I need a minute. And you're like, I just shot you with a bazook in the face. Like, I just need a second. And then after a few minutes, they stand up and talk to you. And it's like, John didn't like that. I'm guessing that's what they're doing. here. Historical figures that previously died within the fictional game like Liu Wenchu and Liu Chengin. I'm so sorry. I don't. Yeah. I'm from Colorado. What did you expect? My pronunciation is going to be bad. And Emperor Chongshin are now live or now live on. Yep. They can't be killed. Let's see. Daniel said, yep, the game isn't even officially released in China. It doesn't have a

publishing license. Too much of its content goes against what's allowed to be depicted in games in China anyway. this is really weird that the devs would just falter like this to vocal minorities. It's not a vocal minority over there. There's actually a tremendous amount of people that get upset about something. And this has been something that's been commented on by a lot of players of gotcha games. Because there's a lot of Chinese gotcha games, like, for example, Wuthering Waves or a Genshin Impact, Hong Kai Star Rail, those are just three examples. These are all Chinese games.

And the fact is that the Chinese audiences, really get a lot more attention. They do. And is it because of a language difference? Is it because of a cultural prioritization? It's really kind of hard to say. But one way or another, Chinese audiences absolutely have a much stronger,

like, a much stronger, like, line of contact to Chinese developers. And it's also, and then you also have the CCP, right? Like, they have actual, like, censorship expectations and cultural expectations inside of the government themselves. So it's not like here in the U.S. or at least in some other places in the world where you can pretty much make whatever you want.

You can't do that over there in the same way. This is about the final Ming emperor. After the Manchran's become the Qing dynasty for about 200 years, the last Han Chinese imperial family was the Ming. See, I don't know the details of like the history at all. I'm not sure. Hans replied, people got mad you can kill the late stage Ming Dynasty,

Ming Dynasty Dragon Emperor in game, but he was literally dead by this point in history, and you kill a horrific zombie version of him to stop his resurrection. Anyone offended by that is wild, and having him survive now ruins the plot. Yeah. It is wild to, like, retcon the plot of your game in a patch. They have to because they're afraid of the government.

That's what I think is happening. a lot of these, again, they don't want to get reported to the government and then have the government look into this. That's what they're really afraid of, I bet. It's not even really about the players. Like, imagine at the end of Last of Us part two, if they patched it and they're like, oh, no, now Ellie drowns the shit out of Abby. They're like, yeah, we updated it, made it a little better. And somebody says it's not the government. I think it's both, right?

I think that obviously they're much more sensitive to what Chinese audiences say, but it's also the risk of the government being involved too. Imagine if they did that. It'd be ridiculous. It's not one or the other. But that's basically what they're doing here is they're changing it. So previously a boss that you killed as like the high point climax of the story now just gets exhausted and like talks to you after the fight.

That's pretty stupid. That's pretty dumb. Okay. It still doesn't sound like, again, I feel like if you put this picture on screen and you say it's censored, I think people will assume something else is happening. But I get what they mean. Yeah, the CCP patch. It feels like they are, I don't know if they're trying to get a publishing license in China and they're trying to tone it down.

Probably, yeah. And they know that if they do this and they have this in the game, the chances of them getting a publishing license probably go down by a lot. like that's it just makes sense i don't think that a lot of especially western players really understand some of the complexities of the way that other governments work and the way that they exercise their power on so that they can get that because in china you can't depict their historical figures that way i guess over a billion people yeah they do yeah this is crazy mcdonald continued like actual censorship due to pressure from chinese players who are upset about

being able to kill historically significant characters from the end of the Ming Dynasty. Crazy to see it. Players are reporting that the quote unquote prey gesture has been removed that you previously learned from the Portuguese Christian character in the game. Yeah. So they removed like the ability to pray as a gesture. I mean. Yeah, probably.

As far as I know that I think that's actually, there's a certain type of I'm not really entirely sure about this. So don't quote me on it. But my understanding is that a lot of anything that is religious or whatever could be censored in China. There's like

different things that if you accidentally do something or portray something in this way, they're going to be against it. Yes? And I don't, they don't allow religion at all. And so yeah, that's basically even ghosts. Yeah, like you look at like World of Warcraft

for example, like the bones and stuff like that. Like talk about snowflakes, man. Like, what the hell are we doing? Like, this is, this is crazy. This is how it is. A series of Ming soldiers in chapter four have also been changed to not fight the player. Making a previously challenging section. Learn to play.

It was easy. Now a breeze. Because they literally don't fight you. What are we like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Like, this is crazy. dude. They're literally like redoing entire chunks of... And this to be solved by simple

localization? The problem is that I think that the company that's making this game is in China. So if they're making a game there that goes against the like cultural mandated behaviors, they're going to get

in trouble. Catering Accomies, why? Well, because it's what the government's telling them to do. Like, what are you going to tell the government no? What do you think happens after that. Like, I mean, really. The game, seemingly to just appease a vocal minority, but I guess there, maybe the argument is just that their hope is to get the publishing license in China. And that represents another,

like, million, two million copies, maybe more. And so they're like, we just have to release in China. So let's just get it. Yeah. Fixed up. And this is what their lawyers are telling them to do. And so they're trying to do that so they can release in China. And they're hoping that then they can make. Somebody says it's censored because it could lead to criticism of the government, which is precariously seated on the ancient mandate of heaven. This mandate is the reason why they censor floods. Floods are a sign that the current ruler has lost the mandate

and is ripe to be deposed or replaced. Man. A lot more money. Maybe. Maybe that's pretty much all it is. Combined with some more general nerves to enemy armor and various boss fights, players have been revolting against patch 1.5 on Steam and Reddit. where some of the cues the

Wucheng subred Mots of deleting complaints quote after 80 hours on Steam I pulled the trigger for console one fan wrote long live Wuching 1.0 some players are currently trying to roll back updates on Steam by editing files not everyone's raging against the latest update

that's not a big deal like I mean it's not a huge it doesn't change the game massively it's just stupid performance continues slowly but surely to improve on PC it was pretty rough at first but that does mean that Wu Chang's steam review rating is finally recovering. Not quite. Complaints of frame rate crashes have been replaced by review bombing over alleged censorship. For its part, Lindsay hasn't

said why it changed Wu Chang's story. Update 1.5 on PS5 and Xbox Series XNS earlier today when this was written. It looks like it was posted yesterday. It's, it is kind of crazy. It's kind of crazy to to literally change the plot of your game in a patch that's... In my opinion, I'm surprised that the game

even got released this way. That's where I'm at. I'm surprised that they even released it like this in the first place. Because I feel like everybody knows that they have this level of censorship and they have this level of cultural expectation. Why would you even put this out in the first

place without checking with somebody or have it. Why were these changes not in on launch? Yeah, you think they played it? I think that a lot of companies self-censor because they don't want to attract the ire of the government. And I think they're right. Testing the waters. Turns out it's a bit too hot. Kind of ridiculous. And then to like literally, also updating it, removing entire sections of the game where now enemies don't attack you. So it goes. Bro, there's a fall with your logical in my furious post. I already read your post. The reason I didn't comment on it is because it was stupid. Your post was the one talking about black myth Wukong as an example. I'm going to go ahead and pull your chat up just so everybody can see

this. What was uncensored in black myth Wukong? You don't understand the difference between political censorship and like gore basically rules. Like you don't understand the difference between those two things. You think that these are both on the same level. You think that portraying the Chinese emperor in a certain way is seen by the Chinese government as the same as having bones? You really think that CCP thinks of those as equivalent to each other? I do. Culture and politics are intertwined in China. If you think that the projection and the way that a cultural figure is shown in a video game is equivalent to the skulls, or the bones, I think that you are delusional.

These are completely different things. Totally different, 100% different. You're comparing apples and oranges. Culture and politics are intertwined, but to act like they're on the same level is just, it's a horrible way to look at it. Just some military basement? Yeah, I can't believe somebody would even say.

And that's why I didn't read your comment, by the way. Whenever you type the comment the first time, I didn't read it because it was stupid. It's not because I didn't see it. I didn't read it because it was dumb. It was from being incredibly difficult to incredibly easy. A lot of people are very insistent with stupidity. It's very annoying. Oh, okay.

Well, it's kind of lame. Kind of sucks. But I think it literally is being done just because they're trying to get access to release in China. And that represents enough cash that it's worth. redoing all of this. So they're like, eh, just go along with it.

Go along with it. Who cares? Yeah, of course they're going to go along with it. Absolutely. It's wild, dude. It's wild. I mean,

again, I still think that the word censorship, at least in the title, makes me think of something else. But I do agree. After reading it, it does sound like it is being censored

specifically to try and appeal to the Chinese regulators who would allow them to sell the game in China. So it would technically fit the definition. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I just hear censorship and I'm like, so boobs, but that's not what it is. Yeah, that's that's over here.

Like over there, it's about other stuff. And what's this year? Wu Chang's actually very little related to CCP on Chinese internet, Du Yang, Chinese TikTok, the historical figures got killed, raised to use controversy and boycotting. And Wu Chang is not seeking license or anything. Well, I think it's multiple things, right? Obviously, it's not just one thing. And I would grant you that.

I think that you're right is that it's not probably just the government. But I think that the government having these type of enforcement mechanisms, I think also directs the culture in a certain way. My head out of the gutter. I'm the problem. But this is wild. Again, like literally think of any other game where they change this. And like, yeah, so the big boss fight, yeah, he lives now.

Sorry, not sorry. It doesn't really make a difference personally. In the game, it doesn't really. really matter. It's just, like, the story in the game is kind of mediocre in general. So, like, it doesn't really make a difference at all. But anyway, in the game it does. I don't, I mean, it makes it gameplay difference a little bit.

But it doesn't change it massively. It's just weird. Yeah, I think it's just weird. Now, bro, imagine Star Blade, but you didn't fright Raven. That's not what happened. Be ridiculous. Everybody would be like, what the hell are you doing? And it would be fair to bring that up.

Be fair to bring that up. Let me see Wu Chang's Steam page. It's sitting at mixed. Oh. Sensorship change story bits. It don't make any sense to comfort fragile Chinese nationalism. Man, I bought the game if I knew it would be censored. Sadly, 1.5 patch ads censor censorship.

It makes changes to NPC dialogues, NPC deaths, quest outcomes. Should have never released it like this. They should have never done it. Gameplay mechanics such as the madness system. It completely affects the story's message. endings. There is no transparency whatsoever. The details are let out and stay hidden behind general patch description so you don't expect these changes at all. I'm 57 hours in, enjoying the game so far, one of the greatest level design since the original Dark Souls,

captivating story. Gameplay is fantastic. With some game performance improvement, I would give it a solid eight or nine out of ten. Still in Chapter 3, did not want to give it a score yet. Then Patch 1.5 showed up. Game performance improvements are welcome. It takes you out of experience, comprehensive experience. No, this is definitely a bad change. like I don't think anybody's denying it's a bad change all I'm saying is that with something like this I'm kind of surprised that it even got released this way

because I would assume that the people making the game would probably predict that this would happen but this must be the first time I've heard of story plot change post release as far as I'm aware plot change made the story completely different and even make some of the character's motivations pointless I don't know what kind of pressure Lindsay got to go as far as changing the game's plot. I've read that it was criticized by some gamers for not being historically accurate,

but the story is fiction. Is it not? Yeah. Well, you're using... It's why like... No, if you're using historical figures, you're going to have people that are going to have opinions. You are.

I mean, the same thing happened with Assassin's Creed Shadows. Just talking about this on Wednesday. The old DLC for Assassin's Creed 3, which is pretty wild at this point. I mean, honestly, it's pretty ridiculous at this point. But it was literally historical fiction in an alternative timeline where George Washington... You're under a misconception about this. It's not the Ming Emperor that's revered. It's hardline nationalists that are Han Chinese got better on about it.

I don't think it's one thing or another. It's all of it. Like, it's very obviously all of it. I mean, the way that they read, like, it's the same thing with the flood stuff. Like, it's not one thing. It's collective things coming together. Assassin's greed went too far, though. Well, I think in general, like, all I'm saying is that this happens in a lot of cultures.

And you saw Assassin's Creed rollback changes too because people thought they were culturally problematic also. Went mad with power and became King Washington. And the DLC is literally called the tyranny of King Washington. Like, can you imagine if they tried to do this with like a Chinese emperor or something? And they're like, yeah, so Mao, he's now got superpowers and he's a zombie and you have to fight him. Throughout the game and then he's the final boss fight. They would lose their minds. Not looking good.

It would lose their minds. Whereas in America we're like, oh, that's freaking cool as hell. I would love to George Washington. No, no. You actually like, no, no, think about it. This is a better example. If they had made a game where the South won the Civil War

and America was better, people would lose their fucking minds. They would be so mad about that. It would be insane. So yeah, no, absolutely. 100 fucking percent. Yes, it 100 percent would happen in America, too. They'd be happy.

They'd gotten rid of all these communists. Yep. It's just very different, very different. It's too bad. The DLC was like kind of ridiculous. I didn't get to play it until years after the fact because it was so broken. It was like so, so broken at launch. But it had like all sorts of magical effects in it too.

And that's obviously a final boss fight on top of a gigantic pyramid that George Washington was building in Washington or in Philadelphia. I think it was. Like you can kind of see it here. Like literally they were building a gigantic pyramid. It's like pretty unhinged as far as like DLC go. But it's back in the day when Assassin's Creed would just do wild stuff. and like, what are we doing, man? What are we doing?

That's a good. It's you fist fight the Pope. Yeah, they shouldn't censor it. That's freaking stupid as hell. And I don't blame people. I think that they just have to. Like, they get enough pushback from like the current culture over there. Again, this is what happens with Gotcha games too.

There's also a component to it that probably the government could get involved. And like the threat of that looming over them whenever you have a bunch of people in the community that are very angry about it that are in your language. Like, you put all that together. and as I said, I'm surprised that it even released this way. I am. It's shocking to me. People for being upset about it.

I can't think of a time where another game has literally cut and changed the story and like final boss fight outcomes. Yeah. Post launch? Like, that's pretty insane. Yeah, no, it's pretty big. I think this is probably one of the biggest examples

of a video game being censored and changed after release, especially in terms of, of a plot device or something like that. And apparently a threat of the U.S. Garland looming of Roblox isn't stopping them. They quadrupled down. Yeah, they're going to keep doing that until it actually happens. Do you think they release it like this to get sales outside of China?

And now they're trying to make a profit from China. I think that there's a lot of reasons why they're doing it. It's probably, again, I think that it's a tremendous cultural unrest that's happening. And then that cultural unrest could precipitate a government intervention. if people report it to the government and enough people are offended by it. That's probably what would happen. And so that's what they're worried about happening over there. And you have all kinds of like, I mean, there's many countries, like I think China's the best

example of it that a lot of people know, is that many games are censored and changed to make them in line with Chinese cultural norms because that's the way they do things over there. Like it or not, that's the way it is. That's the government over there. And it's not like, yeah, this isn't a collective shout. This is the government of the country doing this. And so in some cases, right? Other times it's the culture, right?

And it depends. But yeah, like Wildckels back in TBC. Yeah, exactly. Movies too? Yeah, movies are the same thing. And again, like, it's one of the things that's kind of annoying about certain games that come out. That, you know, they're being censored in one way or another. But in a general sense, I do think that it's never a good thing to have.

something like that gets censored. It's not. Which sucks since King Dynasty was really interesting. Qing Dynasty's every Chinese male had to shave their head and have a ponytail. Yeah, I didn't know that at all. I had no idea. Marvel rivals needs to have a lot of Chinese lore-inspired scans. Well, yeah, they have a few of them, right? I mean, sure, absolutely. It's not culture. The government wants to erase the culture. I don't think that's true at all. The government obviously doesn't want to erase the culture. They want to enforce the culture. They have a specific way that they want people to see things, and that's what matters to them. And I feel like it's really just that simple.