Guilty Gear Strive patch quietly removes mention of Uyghur, Tibet, and Taiwan

Recently, fans of Guilty Gear Strive from the ResetEra forum noticed a rather strange stealth change to the game that came as a part of patch 1.03.

Guilty Gear Strive v1.03 was released a few weeks back and it came with a few technical changes in regard to some minor network and graphics issues, nothing too exciting. At least that's what we see in the patch notes.

But the patch brought another "minor" change that wasn't listed in notes, and it has to do with China's lore entry.

Guilty Gear Strive has a complex in-game glossary for players who want to have a better understanding of the game's lore and all the backstories.

As a part of this in-game lore glossary, there's an entry named "International affairs after the Crusades".

The original, pre-patch version mentions several regions in China or from around China, but after patch 1.03, the names of these regions/countries were removed from the glossary.

This was the original sentence, before patch 1.03:

"China has further expanded their borders to encompass Uyghur, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Mongolia and Siberia - regions with lower populations but a lot of natural resources."

The sentence was altered with patch 1.03 and now it reads:

"The Federation of China has further expanded their borders to encompass nearby regions with lower populations but a lot of natural resources."

The second sentence that was changed has references to Korea, Taiwan and Singapore removed. The original version:

"Countries that had high population density and tended to import their foods, such as Korea, Taiwan and Singapore could not solve their nation's problems with the availability of energy alone."

And after the patch:

"Countries that had high population density and tended to import their foods could not solve their nation's problems with the availability of energy alone."

And while the patch removes mentions of Korea, Singapore, Mongolia, and Siberia as well, many believe that the main reason for these changes is a Chinese intervention due to Taiwan, Uyghur, and Tibet, as these are disputed regions and taboo topics in China, where Guilty Gear Strive has a huge fan base and the game could have been banned from China if Bandai Namco and developer Arc System Works didn't comply with a request from the Chinese government to remove disputatious entries.

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China has a very strict regulation when it comes to video games and the entertainment industry in general, as anything that goes against "national interest" will be forbidden immediately.

Taiwan is a disputed territory as China doesn't recognize Taiwan's independence. When it comes to Uyghur and Tibet, over the past few years China has been accused of conducting crimes against humanity against the Uyghur population and forcing Tibetans into labour camps.

The Chinese influence on the video game industry has drastically risen in recent years, as the Chinese video game market is huge and many publishers are trying not to burn bridges with the government of China in a fear of losing access to the country's lucrative market.

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Guilty Gear Strive, the 25th instalment of the Guilty Gear series, has been prized by both fans and critics.

Released on 11th June, The game has proven to be an excellent 2D fighting game, which builds upon the classic Guilty Gear gameplay while offering a variety of new features to elevate the experience.

The game is undoubtedly fun, and you can check out our Guilty Gear Strive tier list if you want to learn more about which characters are the best.