China video game crackdown bans gay relationships and attacks on ‘barbarians’ – The Times

China has said it will ban video games that promote “effeminate males” and gay relationships, involve the conquest of “barbarians” or seek to alter the history of the Nazis and imperial Japan.

According to a leaked memo, Beijing no longer sees gaming as “entertainment” but as a form of art that must serve the party by promoting “correct values” and “accurate understanding” of history and culture. In August, China limited children to three hours a week of online gaming in what it called an effort to curb addiction.

The instructions, reported by the South China Morning Post as advice for game creators, said that characters must have a “clear gender” and plots cannot “have blurred moral boundaries”, adding: “If regulators can’t tell the character’s gender