Some gamers who have been playing League of Legends noticed that the ethnic term “Uyghur” has been censored in the game. The revelation of this censorship quickly resulted in gamers taking to social media to decry Riot’s decision to censor the term.
Over on the League of Legends sub-reddit on October 20th, 2019, user ResplenddentShade wrote…
“Try changing your status message to Uyghur. You can’t. It’s a legitimate name of a legitimate ethnic group, but Tencent-owned League is so sensitive about covering up the ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people that they won’t even let you use the word. I’ve enjoyed this game for almost 10 years, but garbage like this makes me want to never play again.
“Are there any good MOBAs that aren’t owned and operated by companies that bow down to genocidal regimes? Because I’m not sure if I can continue to support this company in good conscience.”
A moderator popped into the thread several hours later going by the handle of The_Cactopus. They wrote…
“Gonna go look into this right now. Sometimes our system bans really weird words for no good reason. That said it would be compete bullshit to intentionally ban the name of any ethnic group. Will update when I find out more.”
The community was none too pleased with the turn of events given what’s currently happening in China at the moment.
Apart from mainland China trying to restrict the freedoms of those in Hong Kong, they’re also rounding up the Muslim Uyghurs and putting them into concentration camps to “re-educate” them so that they’re more accommodating of China’s “socialist values”. This has received widespread coverage from most mainstream news outlets, with Human Events recently spotlighting the gulags that religious individuals are put into that China’s AI system has classified as potential threats to their society.
PBS News Hour also recently did a spotlight on the camps earlier in October.
If Riot is purposefully attempting to stifle speech surrounding the Uyghurs, then it wouldn’t be surprising since they’re owned by Tencent, which is an arm of the Chinese State party.
But it’s not even just the Chinese who are stifling speech. Even here in America the NBA have been confiscating signs and kicking out fans who have been attempting to bring attention to the Hong Kong protests and the Uyghur concentration camps.
We’ll see if Riot removes the censorship of the Uyghurs or if they’ll double down.
(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre)