Leaked documents outline how Roblox would censor content on its platform to fit China’s rules, Report Says

Internal Roblox documents were leaked as part of a mysterious hacking operation earlier this month. Roblox A mysterious hacking operation leaked internal Roblox documents as part of an extortion scheme. As Vice reported, documents show how Roblox would have to adapt its platform to fit Chinese law.

China has an extensive history of censoring online speech. A mysterious hacking operation allegedly stole and published confidential internet documents from Roblox on a forum this month, as part of a ploy to extort the massively popular gaming company. Documents from 2017 included in that hack appeared to show a plan to adapt a version of the platform in China, according to Vice, which first reported on the files.

 These documents described how Roblox would need to mold its platform to fit China’s extensive content laws. Known as one of the most censorious countries in the world, China has a long history of deleting content online and suppressing users who speak out. Numerous US-based and international companies in the past have adapted their websites to fit Chinese rules, including airlines like Delta, which faced backlash from China after it listed self-governing Taiwan as its own country.

China has long contentiously claimed Taiwan as part of its territory.  Although Roblox did eventually create a mobile Chinese version of its platform (Roblox China, also known as LuoBoLeSi) in July last year, the game shuttered indefinitely in December. To release the game, Roblox had partnered with the massive entertainment conglomerate Tencent, which was one of two companies listed as potential partners in the documents reviewed by Vice.

 Some of these documents were from a 2017 Roblox-made slideshow presentation, according to Vice. The company in the presentation appears to describe how it would need to adapt to Chinese rules and weighs whether to partner with Tencent or NetEase, a Chinese tech and game company. The documents state that all the Chinese players’ PII — or personally identifiable information — would have to “remain in China” and could not cross the Great Firewall.

All the Chinese game servers would have to be located in China, the document says, citing Chinese law. The internal documents also list “security” measures or warnings about what might happen when working with a Chinese partner. “Expect hundreds of people working on reverse engineering the code,” reads a bullet point on one slide.

“Expect them to be successful,” the one below it says. Another leaked presentation from November 2018, published by Vice, was allegedly created by Tencent as an outline or guidebook for how online games would have to observe Chinese law. Roblox and Tencent didn’t announce their “strategic partnership” until half a year later in May 2019.

The Tencent presentation says that any sort of gambling, porn, “sexual insinuation,” and violence was not allowed in the game, citing country regulations. The list of unlawful game content is sprawling and vague: there could be no “vulgar words,” nothing going “against basic moral values,” nothing promoting “polygamy or one-night stands” or “the values of money is all, power is all and so on. “The presentation also says history-based games could not “tamper with historical facts” and “must not misrepresent the Chinese territory.

” The page includes a map with four circles; one of them is around Taiwan. The presentation also disallows anything related to Nazis in World War II, and says games “must not present armed forces or organizations that invade Chinese territory or domestic land. “Read the original article on Insider.