Tencent is acquiring a majority stake in Klei Entertainment

I highly doubt it, Ma was never on Xi's side in the first place those high level party official he once had dont matter in Xi's era anymore.

Blizzard proceeded to ban the player, take away his prizemoney and also fire the live stream casters.

Following community criticism, they gave back the prizemoney to the player and reduced his ban to 6 months. Also, they said "the specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made". But in the official Blizzard Weibo account, they had mentioned they applied the ban to "protect China's national dignity".

Good videos about this: https://youtu.be/uXEP02K3g5M https://youtu.be/oBpcAEMd7tc

It might even be profitable in the longer run as long as the brand image holds like it has been for Apple.

I am guessing things did not change much since then.

It baffles me sometimes that while gaming industry is booming, create massive opportunities and tax revenue, and it is no way threatening the communist ideology, the government still treats it like a step child, shitting on it whenever it can.

It's also a question you should ask whenever someone demands "reciprocity" by banning Chinese company X from Western markets because Western company Y is banned from China. If you ask "if Y were a Chinese company, would they be banned, too?" the answer is usually yes.

Google Search and Facebook aren't banned because of where they're from, but because of what they do, i.e. offering access to information the Chinese government wants censored. A Chinese company offering access to censored information would be shut down long before they got big enough to make international news.

There's no need for "reciprocity" by putting more severe restrictions on Chinese companies. Applying the same rules to everyone would be enough. (Requiring all companies listed on US stock exchanges to be audited by the SEC is an example of a step in that direction.)

Not yet. Despite various sources saying it is "near", the separate "instance" has not been up for now.

The main Steam store works in China for the past few years, and it's what everyone uses. Yes, I mean I can buy a copy of Devotion on Steam with Alipay (or Wechat Pay) + RMB, download and play it without messing with anything. I have no idea why it hasn't been banned though.

The Steam Community pages did get GFW-ed, just as every other sites hosting UGC without censorship[1].

[1]: If it is not, it's usually just a "Five demands not one less" away from being banned. Even scratch.mit.edu.

That honestly sounds reasonable to me. I don't see that deal as nasty. There's so much content, I didn't miss the extra characters at all. I actually almost completely missed the idea that there are more characters, so when I got the free extra one, I just though "oh, that's cool".

It doesn't limit your gameplay unless you really want to grind and complete 100% of Genshin. (and at that point you're sinking many hours a day - maybe it's worth paying for?) It's emphatically not "pay to win".

I honestly don't think I'm missing much. I could use a Cryo or Pyro 5*, but it's perfectly fine.

I did get somewhat lucky, but I was able to do ~130 free gacha rolls and have enough gems left for around 20 more, so it's not outside of expectations.

I think it is fine. You can always lust after more characters but really, if you spend your primogems wisely, there is no real need beyond what you can get for free.

I also appreciate the resin system that removes the incentive to spend too much time on the game. It limits me to 45 minutes a day which undoubtedly costs MiHoYo a lot but is appreciated.

If you run the numbers, every day you can as a F2P player get enough for a 1.6-2.2% probability at a 5* character, so around 40-60% at a 5* every month. For this you have to be patient and game the pity system, though.