A new report indicates that the phrase Winnie the Pooh is censored for Chinese players who play World of Warcraft, PUBG, and Arena of Valor.
Abacus News, which is an English-language website focused on China, reports that the phrase Winnie the Pooh is censored for Chinese players who play World of Warcraft, PUBG, and Arena of Valor. They indicate that the cartoon bear created by British author A.A. Milne is used to criticize China’s communist president Xi Jinping.
Abacus News allegedly tested whether or not Winnie the Pooh was censored on World of Warcraft, Overwatch, PUBG, and Arena of Valor. They reported that Winnie the Pooh is censored in World of Warcraft with the phrase being “turned into a strings of punctuation marks.”
They also indicate the phrase is censored on PUBG, but instead of punctuation marks the phrase is “turned into asterisks.” They even indicate that the word Taiwan was censored in PUBG.
As for Arena of Valor, the Chinese version of the game does censor Winnie the Pooh. However, the international version the phrase is uncensored.
Interestingly, they reported that the phrase is not censored in Overwatch.
The publication indicated they performed this test after reports of players being banned from Overwatch for using the phrase Winnie the Pooh. Dexerto reported that a number of Chinese Overwatch players were banned from the game for using the phrase Winnie the Pooh.
In a translation provided by reddit user bata12. the player indicates he was baited into using the phrase, Winnie the Pooh, which resulted in his ban.
“Now there are a group of people in Overwatch, they would send some harmless coontent in chat, but if you reply it, you action would be ‘insulting leaders of our country’.
Yesterday I was playing QP with my friends. We were on attack in Junkertown, a guy named Mikasamikoto says ‘Anyone knows who is the best friend of Tigger?’, at that time I didn’t know it was a trap, so I think about it and says”Winnie-The-Pooh”, then my account got banned within like 3 seconds.””
Abacus News indicated they were not banned for using the phrase on Overwatch.
What do you make of China censoring the phrase Winnie the Pooh because it can be used as a derogatory term against their president Xi Jinping? Do you think Winnie the Pooh should be censored?