Need help regarding whether this scenario would be allowed

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#1

Hey,
So recently I had an idea for a game, but I’m unsure of whether it would be allowed or not, since I myself usually get a little bit paranoid about getting banned or moderated for anything I make.

The premise of my idea was to have a game set in Central Asia centered around corporate competition and some military intervention. The basic idea is to focus around convoys of rare earth materials extracted by the landscape that would either have to be escorted or attacked by the player as a hired mercenary of these stated groups. This part I’m not so concerned about, the issue is that destination locations are implied to be controlled by foreign militaries, who are unable to secure the rest of the route due to political blockades. Since the region I’m focusing in includes China, I’m concerned about implying political tension between China and other nations, which ends up being construed to me making a game about current political events.

Here are precautions I’ve taken to avoid this: While there are road signs and towns in Chinese, no town is based off of any real world location. China is not named as a nation in this, and the region is only referred to by the vague descriptor “Central Asia”. Additionally, I’ve also mixed the surrounding area with Kazak and Kyrgyzstani named towns to try and break up the idea of it being solely set in China.

Still, I always want to be on the safe side, so I’d like to ask whether or not I’m crossing the line on this, or if I’m just being overly paranoid. Thanks.

#2

Poll

  • It’s allowed
  • Not allowed
  • Tone it down so it’s not offensive

0 voters

Sorry, its the only thing i can do

#3

Since you’re not referencing specific countries already, why say it’s based in real life at all? Imo, being vague about where in the real world the game is set makes it worse; since you’re depicting tensions in Central Asia, the user may quickly make the connection it’s commentary on Chinese geopolitics. If your road signs are in mandarin, it will be clear where it is anyways. Safest thing to do would have it all localized to the user’s language and just let the environment look like Central Asia, which shouldn’t detract from the gameplay

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#4

Pick well, a normal economic city such as Shanghai or a tourist city such as Sanya would be perfectly fine, but yes, if you purposely indicate locations such as Xinjiang Tibet or Taiwan it will get political, I doubt you’ll be banned, but your game will be less friendly.

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#5

Yeah, I see your point for that, which is why I’ve chosen to specifically avoid using any real life towns. This might’ve been an oversight on my part, but a lot of the references I’ve been using are from the Xinjiang region. Completely unrelated to the focus of my game, but in that case I think it may be best to follow what @MP3Face said and remove any foreign dialects altogether.

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