China’s Game For Peace announces first tournament at end of the month

Game For Peace, the China-friendly mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battleground, has announced its first tournament. 

On August 31, the Peacekeeper Elite Global Invitational will be held in Shanghai, China. 25 teams from around the world will compete across six games. The event features an unconventional format, with four games being played in third-person perspective on Erangel and two in first-person perspective on Miramar. 

15 of the participating squads competed in platform qualifiers held by various sponsors, including Kuaishou, eGame, and Douyu. The other 10 teams were chosen to compete based on their performance in the PUBG Mobile Club Open Spring Split Global Finals. This includes the Finals winner X-Quest F.

The other teams from the PMCO Global Finals who will go on to compete in the Game for Peace tournament are ILLUMINATE The Murder, Evos Esports, Team Secret, RRQ Athena, Spacestation Gaming, Deformia Meditari 99, BRK Gaming, Elite Esports, and TOP Esports. 

There are 15 Chinese teams set to compete at the Peacekeeper Elite Global Invitational from a number of prominent esports organizations, including Fun Plus X, Royal Never Give Up, and LNG Esports.

No prize pool information has been revealed as of this writing. 

Game for Peace was announced in May after Tencent Holdings, who controls the rights to the game in China, had issues monetizing it in the region due to criticism regarding its violent content. Game for Peace is largely identical to PUBG Mobile but features patriotic themes and takes steps to make the game appear less violent. This includes eliminated opponents innocently waving goodbye and disappearing, instead of dying. 

While comedic in many ways, Game for Peace shows how restrictive the Chinese government can be and how many hoops game publishers are willing to jump through in order to tap into the 1.2-billion-person market. Not only is blood censored in every video game title in China, but games are not allowed to us the word “kill” and must promote China’s values and culture. 

With President Donald Trump’s recent comments about video game’s role in America’s gun violence epidemic, the gaming community fears that games deemed violent in North America could maybe see a similar fate down the road.