Microsoft Finds Legal Path To Launch Minecraft In China (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Minecraft's PC and smartphone versions are finally coming to China. On Friday, Microsoft and Mojang announced the beginning of a "five-year exclusive partnership" with Chinese software publisher NetEase, Inc to roll the game out onto Chinese computer and smartphone marketplaces. Microsoft was able to publish the game on Xbox One consoles late last year, but those consoles have yet to penetrate the Chinese market to the extent that PCs and smartphones have, and the fact that even Microsoft had to license the game to someone else as opposed to launching it from its own Shanghai campus is a stern reminder of what roadblocks stand in the way of Western software developers. "The most challenging aspect of doing business in China by far is dealing with the government," former PopCap executive James Gwertzman said at the 2010 Game Developers Conference. Game publishers must acquire a combined six permits to launch a game in China, and most of those permits cannot be acquired by foreign-operated companies. Microsoft is presumably in the exact same regulatory boat, and its choice of partner is telling; NetEase already has a major Western-gaming reputation thanks to its partnership with megawatt game makers Blizzard. Gwertzman guessed that Minecraft will probably avoid such undue attention with its upcoming launch. "Minecraft is on the good side as it encourages teamwork and learning," he said. "I see Minecraft as the perfect example of a game that will receive public support [in China]." Meanwhile, American technology companies like Apple and Microsoft are undergoing security reviews in the communist country.

Comments

Nothing Matters; Except for the Almighty Dollar

[negRo_slim]

Heaven forbid you forgo a regressive market or *gasp* hold on to any shred of values as a large organization in the way and places you choose to do business.

Tell that to Huawei

[hmcbbs]

If only Huawei allowed to partner up with a US company to sell router/switch/LTE here in the US. Talk about government...

Re:Tell that to Huawei

[ArmoredDragon]

I think the reason for that is that this kind of gear is critical infrastructure gear, and Huawei, like any Chinese company, is ultimately beholden to the demands of their government. Other countries avoid Cisco for a slightly different reason. Cisco isn't beholden to the US government, however the problem is that their gear ships from the US, which means that there's nothing stopping the US government from adulterating it some time between when it leaves Cisco's hands and ends up in its customer's hands, and even though they're technically not allowed to do that, they do it anyways.

Re:Tell that to Huawei

[AK Marc]

Cisco is beholden to the US government, and doesn't ship from the US. My SG made Cisco gear never passes through the US. Huawei has never had a vulnerability found that didn't come from copying Cisco. It's Cisco that deliberately puts them there.

Re:who freaking cares

[UnknownSoldier]

You don't know WTF you are talking about. You're comparing Apples and Oranges.

1. Doom static world
2. Minecraft dynamic world

Minecraft can be summed up in 2 words: Digital Lego

Let me know the last time you could, in-game build structures like Minas Tirith, Hogwart's Castle, etc.

Yes, we all know Minecraft looks like shit. That isn't the point. Repeat after me: user generated content

It's protectionism

[Okian Warrior]

Somehow this sounds bad....

It's because China is using a protectionist practice.

China wants domestic companies selling things domestically(*). If an outside company has a product it wants to sell, it has to license it to a domestically-owned company inside China.

This forces at least some of the money to stay in China, paying Chinese people, and otherwise helping the local economy. It reduces the trade deficit somewhat and makes the Chinese economy stronger.

Compare and contrast to modern American economics, which holds that "free trade is best trade", all the money from the sale of foreign goods and products goes to the foreign entity. The money leaves the country and no Americans get paid.

(*) I was under the impression that the rule was that a Chinese company had to be at least 51% owned by Chinese in order to sell domestically, but that was years ago. I don't know if this is still the case.

Re:It's protectionism

[JBMcB]

It's because China is using a protectionist practice.

Western scholars figured out the problem with this practice hundreds of years ago. Problem is - it screws with your money supply something fierce. You end up having to radically manipulate your money supply, and you wind up with deflation and endless stimulus spending. Japan did the same thing in the 70's and 80's, and they've been paying for it over the last two decades (stagflation in the 90's-2000's, deflation since then.) China's turn is coming up soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:It's protectionism

[bloodhawk]

The US also practises protectionism in many markets with tariffs and subsidies. Including many current cases which are before the WTO.

Re:who freaking cares

[drinkypoo]

Let me know the last time you could, in-game build structures like Minas Tirith, Hogwart's Castle, etc.

Cube

Can you explain something to me?

[Okian Warrior]

It's because China is using a protectionist practice.

Western scholars figured out the problem with this practice hundreds of years ago. Problem is - it screws with your money supply something fierce. You end up having to radically manipulate your money supply, and you wind up with deflation and endless stimulus spending. Japan did the same thing in the 70's and 80's, and they've been paying for it over the last two decades (stagflation in the 90's-2000's, deflation since then.) China's turn is coming up soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I'm happy to learn more about this, but I am a bit sceptical about your conclusions. (Not the least of which is the general religious undertone of economic schools of thought.)

Firstly, the US is mostly free trade, and yet we've had to do stimulus spending for the last six-or-seven years. I don't really see the difference on that dimension.

Secondly, although the US isn't in a deflation cycle, we *almost* are. Checking the monthly inflation rates shows negative inflation for several months of 2015, and fairly low inflation for the last couple of years. Despite massive stimulus spending, despite the government spending trillions more than revenue over the last decade, we're *still* not up to the generally-accepted-healthy value of inflation of 2.5%.

There's recent evidence that depression and deflation aren't empirically linked, so it's no longer clear to me that deflation is as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

And finally, your analysis may be correct but myopic in that it doesn't take into account other factors such as employment. The US could be in a good financial situation and also on the precipice of revolt. If enough people are unemployed and *can't* find a job, if enough people drop from middle-class to poor-class, then there would be a great deal of unrest.

We're 'kinda seeing that now. Productivity is up, overall profits are up, but for the vast majority of Americans wages have remained stagnant. All the profits go to the upper echelons, so it *seems* like we're doing fine financially when in reality a lot of people are miserable.

I'm not an economist, I'm only trying to figure out this stuff on my own. Some aspects of "current economic theory" don't seem to make sense.

Can you explain why unemployment (or more accurately, the labor force participation rate isn't a priority in your analysis?

Re:Can you explain something to me?

[ShooterNeo]

I'm not going to pretend to know all the answers, either, but a couple of insights for you.

1. Economic theories are as simple as possible in order to make testable predictions and to make analysis easier. All science tries to make theories as simple as possible, only adding complexity when it is required. This is fine, the problem is when politicians make policy decisions based on unproven or incorrect economic theories.

2. Regarding free trade specifically, these theories say it increases total net economic output. And it does. The problem now is that individual Americans being out of work is not a variable being considered or controlled for.

3. A certain political party shouts from the rooftops that the reason we need low taxes on the rich and a minimal safety net is so there is immense pressure to be a "producer" and to not be a drain on society, and that if we have anything like a real welfare state, no one will do any work and everything will fall into ruin.

The problem with this untested theory is it implicitly assumes that if people aren't being worked to death all the time, not enough will be produced since people are being lazy, and everything will collapse. It implicitly assumes scarce labor from productive people.

But this isn't true. There's millions and millions of unemployed and underemployed people willing to be productive, there just aren't jobs for them. And the productive laborers who are working are producing more resources than ever. So we end up in a society where we don't give that bum under the bridge with a cardboard sign a free apartment and a commissary card because we "can't afford" the material resources, yet our society has more money than ever and there is not a job available for that bum to earn his keep anyway.

Re:Can you explain something to me?

[mentil]

The linked inflation statistics are from the US Government, which are widely accepted to be heavily manipulated (i.e. much lower than inflation for most things that matter to most people).

It's possible that depression and deflation aren't correlated because countries which are capable of causing deflation monitor their economy enough to realize they should increase stimulus spending in order to prevent a recession from turning into a depression, or modify the policies leading to deflation. Deflation could still be very bad for an economy even if it doesn't itself lead to a depression. OTOH, the flipside of people saving rather than spending is that they're later able to afford more expensive things they would be unable to ever purchase if they were spending all their income as they received it; for example, buying a car instead of a year of fast food.

Social sciences have a fuzziness to them that's difficult to cut through; many theories have been proven and experiments that returned interesting conclusions, but there are always more hidden variables and unknown mechanics that inhibit a full understanding. Many macroeconomists are part of the upper classes, and have a conflict of interest to optimistically promote policies which just so happen to benefit themselves.

Something I haven't seen talked about much is the unemployed being a drain on friends and family; an employed person's income may on paper be the same or higher than it was, but now that they're supporting an unemployed person or three, their standard of living goes down. Even someone with a nice secure middle-class job can only take so much of that before they start feeling like the economy is hurting them... even aside from taxes. We may go back to the days of extended family all living in one house, rather than just a nuclear family; of course many immigrants are already doing this just as they did at home.

Re:Uhhhh... what?

[Lehk228]

GP doesn't know how to win Civ cultural victory