Anonymous
Hate Machine Award Speech
[The winner of this award was China]
[Voiced by Duke]

China’s motto is “Serve the People”, yet they only serve themselves to their growing power on the world stage, and it shows how Western game developers are forced to decide between bending the knee or depriving themselves of their largest market share.

Financial bankruptcy at worst, moral bankruptcy at best. At least three other nominees from this category were either influenced or caused by China, from increasingly predatory gacha mechanics, to having major western companies bend the knee to Tencent because of their user majority consisting of Chinese players, to being ground zero for Covid-19 itself.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is, China’s large market share of people is just too appealing for big companies who want all that Yuan, and so their political shenanigans seep into the gaming world, including their shameless censorship and predatory gacha mechanics among other violations of consumer rights.

China’s here to stay, there’s no changing that sadly. All we can hope is that some kind of miracle happens that suddenly makes it unprofitable to focus on them as a market above your Western fans. But considering how high their tolerance for shitty practices are, I think that’s a long, long way’s away.