Chinese MMORPG JX3 has been making some headlines recently when 1.5 million Taiwanese players were removed from the game by the Zhuhai-based development team at Seasun Games.

Censored Gaming tweeted out about the news, as many recoiled at the censorship applied to others over simply calling the coronavirus the “Wuhan Virus” in chat.

This Chinese game just removed all Taiwanese players from the game, over the term “Wuhan virus” being used in chat – that’s 1.5 million Taiwanese players. pic.twitter.com/0cq9fEmGut — Censored Gaming (@CensoredGaming_) April 7, 2020

According to Game World Observer, the issue took place during the weekend of April 4th, 2020, where China had a national day of mourning for those who passed from the coronavirus.

Many major online games operated out of China shut down for the day or were put on hold. Since Seasun Games is a subsidiary of the Chinese parent company Kingsoft, they decided to shut down the servers for JX3 for a few hours, which meant that gamers had to do something else in the meantime. What did they do? Head to the chat.

During the chat they began discussing the coronavirus and referred to it as the “Wuhan virus”.

Apparently the comments were pervasive enough from the Taiwanese players so much so that Seasun Games opted to step in and have their Taiwanese partners at Wanin issue 10-year bans on players who were saying “Wuhan virus”.

Wanin opted out of issuing bans against the players because they claimed that it violated freedom of speech.

According to Abacus, this is when Seasun stepped in and cut ties with Wanin, who provided JX3 with 1.5 million Taiwanese players. That’s out of a total of 3.3 million players from East Asia. So nearly half of their entire East Asian playerbase was culled after they ended their partnership with Wanin for not censoring the players who called coronavirus “Wuhan virus” in chat.

A drastic measure from Seasun who seems to be protecting the interests of the Chinese state party by punishing Taiwanese gamers.

(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre)