Why the Snowbreak Censorship Should Not Worry Other Games
First, a quick tl;dr
- All content for games from Snowbreak's area must be screened with regulators ahead of time.
- Snowbreak showed regulators one thing, then gave players a DIY file mod so that they saw another.
- Snowbreak devs revealed that they knew the decensor existed and asked streamers to use it.
- Regulators butchered the game because it was circumventing the system.
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I'm sure you've all heard the news. Depending on how you feel about it, I'm either happy for you or sorry it happened. Just like when Snowbreak first shut down, some people are claiming that similar incidents will soon befall other games. I am here to assure you that is not going to happen. Snowbreak's demise is because the developers chose to play a very dangerous game. No one else is foolish enough to risk it.
1. Content Regulation in China
Whenever a gacha game creates a patch, they must first submit the content for review. This isn't always an exhaustive review, but the sampled materials must be representative. The exact rules on what passes are intentionally vague with the idea being that if you draw a line, everyone will run up to it right away. If the line is blurry, games will self-regulate while worrying about crossing the line. Review is also context dependent. Characters in swimsuits can show more skin; male nipples are fine while female nipples are not. A bit of risque material is less likely to be flagged than if everything is risque. Once the material is approved, it cannot be changed without another review.
If you release material that differs from what you submitted for review, you instantly lose your game license and your game is pulled from all distribution. To get it back again, you must pass review with the same people that took it away. And they hate you now. You do not, under any circumstances, modify content after the review unless you're a complete idiot. Snowbreak did not suffer this fate. While they did shut their servers down, government records show that their game license was never pulled. This was due to a rather slick plan on their part.
2. Snowbreak's Devs Slick Plan
After several censorship incidents where their content passed review but was later censored after a closer look (which suggests they did not provide representative samples AND/OR the regulators were pissed), Snowbreak's devs began sending censored outfits for review. They weren't so foolish as to then ship uncensored outfits directly. Instead, they took a page from old-school gachas and 'discreetly' spread a method to easily uncensor the game among their playerbase.
An official Snowbreak employee giving the decensor to a content creator after a censorship wave
This is why Snowbreak's censored outfits are incredibly half-assed. The devs did not care to make them palatable because they did not expect anyone to actually see them except for the regulators. This wasn't a good bet, but more on that later. The end result is that they were technically compliant with the law and, since players had to technically modify the game to see the uncensored outfits, they had a thin legal defense if the decensor were ever exposed.
3. The Decensor is Obviously Exposed
Since the censored outfits are extremely ugly, Snowbreak employees routinely told sponsored streamers how to decensor the game and even instructed them on how to do it.
The game's producer and the marketing director (two people) also routinely posted decensored content on their social media. The game's trailers usually slipped in a few seconds where players could pause to get an uncensored screenshot as well. This was a very open secret. The trick was blasted all over the place by design because the devs knew that no one was interested in playing the game in a censored state--or at least not enough people to keep it afloat. However, because the regulators do not actually play games, they did not notice. Or perhaps Seasun's parent company, Kingsoft, was able to get them some leniency. While the direct studio (LHM) that made the game is small, it is part of Seasun which brags about being the oldest video game company in China and publishes JX3 online--a 20 year old MMO with strong Chinese cultural influence that is still going strong and makes up most of their revenue. Kingsoft is chaired by Lei Jun, one of the richest men in China and one with a sterling reputation as an all-around do-gooder. As long as Snowbreak remained a niche game and didn't cause a national controversy, it was likely better to overlook a little overeager gooning than to smear the reputation of Lei Jun, Kingsoft, or Seasun.
4. Snowbreak Causes a National Controversy
The developers and some fans of the game have been obnoxious from the start. Suffice to say that they have made enemies all over the gacha space in China and without. Not all attacks against them are warranted, but what matters is that there are legitimately legions of folks who would love to see them humbled. This is in no small part because they brag about their gooner content and accuse other companies of just being cowards and refusing to give players what they want. The devs declared their work an 18+ game (they didn't get a designation from the government; they just self-declared) and advertised that it was 18+. The players laughed at all the major players for not daring to show as much ass as Seasun.
The marketing director posts cringe after a censorship hit
Both the developers and the players were, to be nice, insufferable in this regard. They demanded that Snowbreak be seen as THE gooner game. The only game willing to give men what they really wanted--balloon boobs as far as the eye could see.
Then they collaborated with the National Post Office. If you have two brain cells to rub together, consider donating one to these developers because they somehow did not see what the inevitable outcome of this would be.
Now, other spicy games have collaborated with the National Post Office without incident. This is because they made the collab content completely sterile.
From the Love and Producer collab, often mistaken as Love and Deepspace by Snowbros
Snowbreak went a different route. They had the good sense to censor their censored outfits even more so that nothing explicit was showing, but these were still bridal-esque outfits with characters in sensual poses. At the very least, it could be seen as a promotion of polygamy (the game's MC had just married his 8th wife).
The material itself would not have been an issue alone, but combined with the game's fiercely defended reputation as an 18+ adult game for horny men and the army of people eager to strike back at it that vastly outnumbered the players and the fact that it was a collaboration with a government entity, it blew up on social media. This resulted in a news channel showing footage of a random streamer playing the game...with the decensor enabled.
The Blurring Makes it Worse TBH
Now, even if the shown footage matched what was sent for review, the game still would have received a knock on the head from the Iron Fist of censorship. If the regulators approve something and then the public gets upset about it, the regulators do not take your side. They censor you even harder for embarrassing them. However, since the footage did not match what was sent for review, an inquiry began immediately. Soon, a visual novel style blowjob scene in the main story of that patch suspiciously stopped working. A day later, the game announced indeterminate maintenance and went radio silent. The developers social media accounts and the official Bilibili channel, which all contained decensored content sprinkled in, went private and never returned (except for some pre-launch videos on Bilibili). If only the devs could have known...
5.) The Devs Should Have Known
Before releasing Snowbreak, Seasun made a couple of games in the Girl Cafe Gun series. They ripped those characters off for Snowbreak to a hilarious degree though they, thankfully, boosted most of them above the age of consent this time. Like Snowbreak, GCG was forced to shut down for rectification and included a decensor method when it reopened. However, it never really caught on and the game was eventually abandoned with most of the staff being moved to work on Snowbreak instead. The game stopped receiving updates and eventually EoS'd around the month where Snowbreak was initially supposed to launch based on files datamined in the first client--November 2023.
Found in Client on Actual Launch of 7/20
Seasun actually has a long history of games where they promise to release the spiciest content and skirt the regulators in some fashion. Players are drawn in by the honeypot and when Seasun inevitably gets caught and is forced to censor the game, they simply move on to the next project. Snowbreak is by far their most ambitious game and one where there was some initial push to do something more sustainable, but they quickly reset to their default shenanigans. This is why, I suspect, the regulators took them back behind the barn and made them shoot their own game in the knees repeatedly. It wasn't about protecting the children or societal contagion--it was about punishing a company that can't seem to stop pulling this same trick.
Not only did they have to censor nearly everything in the game, they had to censor things that were already censored and even things they were forced to censor already in the past. After this, they were forced to disable their decensor mechanism. Players who spent absurd amounts of money to support the one developer they thought had their best interest in mind suddenly had to play the version of the game that actually passed review. Since Seasun spent the years after their gooner turn dialing up the goon without much in the way of core gameplay improvements, this wasn't a particularly attractive idea. Once again, Seasun got players money and then cried that they couldn't possibly do anything about the government forcing them to take away the goods they promised to deliver.
It's working a little better than usual. While most people have walked away, many are buying the narrative that Seasun really loves them and is doing the best they can. Nevermind that they couldn't be bothered to even add texture to the censored outfits despite over two months of downtime. Only the costume that is currently on sale got a censored version that isn't just untextured plastic.
6. What Does This Mean for Other Games
In a word: Nothing.
Snowbreak was hit with extreme censorship due to a series of foolish decisions by the developer. They were uniquely vulnerable due to their decensor regulation circumvention and only got slammed because the decensor was discovered by regulators. Basically no other modern gacha is using a decensor for precisely this reason--it's impossible to keep one under wraps in the social media age and especially when people constantly stream your game. It's just a matter of time until the blowback comes and it will always be more trouble than it's worth as the regulators can force you to censor more than other games if they hate you. And they will hate you.
Some players have pointed out the practice of mass reporting games. However, games are only vulnerable to that if they do something dumb like circumvent regulation. Otherwise, all of the content in the game has been seen by and approved by the very people you're reporting the game to. They're going to ignore the report unless it somehow becomes too embarrassing not to. Other gacha games with competent PR teams and that didn't build their brand on controversy and picking fights know how to avoid these sorts of situations for precisely this reason.
7. What Does This Mean for Snowbreak
Contrary to fan's hopes, they're probably not going to release another decensor trick. They are being watched like a hawk and that's never, ever going to stop being the case. The regulators they embarrassed are likely itching to kick them in the balls again ASAP and may have only approved the current version to show everyone that they made an example of these guys.
At the same time, they're unlikely to ignore the current PAK mod to decensor the game. Doing so could be used as evidence that they are, once again, circumventing regulation.
Also, that PAK mod works because they have always created models with a switch to change between the version they show regulators and the version they show players. If they keep doing that, the Iron Fist will return to knock out all their teeth. Players will have to just mod in entire models like with the costumes made before the switch that are not decensored with the base PAK mod.
As we see with the new character, they did finally hire someone who can make costumes that can pass regulation and don't look like complete trash, but it's too little, too late. They essentially have to give up making money on all content except that one skin if they just try to tough it out. However, this is the most likely outcome because it is the only one that doesn't involve another trip behind the barn.
The most recent patch launched with no PV, no character preview and not even character cards on the rerun banner notices. The devs knew what was coming and chose not to say anything to players. Since the patch went live, there has been no official communication. They aren't even talking to their Discord mods despite all the trouble they went through to install CN users to police the Global Discord some time ago. The usually chatty Producer and Marketing Director both remain silent with all posts hidden.
The devs know the gig is up and they know that at the end of the day, they still have all the money while the players can only cope until the inevitable EoS.
