Game developers go through the challenge of penetrating the Chinese marketplace because of the government censors in place. And Roblox wasn't exempted from this, as reported by Engadget.
Just last year, Roblox launched a version of the game in China called LoubuLeSi, and like many other Western gaming companies that enter China, they needed to partner with a Chinese company. In this case, Roblox partnered with Tencent.
Tencent is the one responsible to operate the game in China, while Roblox's role is to host user data on local servers as required by law.
New documents published by Motherboard provided a rare look into the steps some companies take to comply with the country's censorship laws. It was an internal presentation created by Roblox in 2017 as it was working to enter the Chinese market.
The document revealed that Roblox assumed and prepared for the possibility that any Chinese partner it worked with could try to hack the game. They also expected Tencent to copy the game and create their own version.
The documents also reveal the steps Roblox took to get its game to comply with the censorship laws in China. For one, any maps in the game should "respect the integrity of the country and not misrepresent the Chinese territory." This includes recognizing Beijing's claim to self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory.
Additionally, users and developers must not tamper with historical facts and should not contain images or names of national leaders.
Roblox also expected a group of hundreds of people to work on reverse engineering any code they placed on Chinese servers.
Also Read: 'Roblox' Hack: Internal Documents Leak Online After Employee Phishing Scam
Back in 2017, the Chinese market seems open for Roblox although Tencent was likely to create a similar platform, Roblox had no copycats in the country just yet.
A slide says, "Strategically important to strengthen social networks. Best defense is a good offense-network effects will thwart copy cats."
Roblox also pointed out the recent failures of Tencent at launching user-generated content gaming in the past years, while they had a huge back catalog of user-made content that they could bring to the country.
Furthermore, Roblox has its own engine that developers all over the world users to create their virtual worlds. On top of that, the company had a strong social component.
Other tasks also included the implementation of phone authentically with SMS validation that would uses a "government validation API" and the company would also gather national IDs.
Roblox hasn't given a statement yet about these leaked documents regarding the efforts they made to get into the China market.
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Written by April Fowell
