Shanda Entertainment is one of the more notable names when it comes to the gaming industry in mainland China, and suffice to say whatever they decree is often the law, as with the case for Aurora Technology (one of their subsidiaries) who has started to freeze accounts of male players who decide to play as female characters in the King of the World MMORPG. This reeks of double standards as there are no similar bans on females who take up male avatars in the game, despite the fact that if you want to play as the opposite sex, you will have to prove your gender via webcam.

Shanda (Nasdaq: SNDA) subsidiary Aurora Technology has frozen game accounts of male players who chose to play female in-game characters in its in-house developed MMORPG King of the World, reports 17173. Aurora stipulates that only female gamers can play female characters in the game, and it requires gamers who chose female characters to prove their biological sex with a webcam, according to the report.

Not sure why such a ban was introduced, and the use of a webcam to prove one’s gender is easy to overcome, what with fake wigs and eyelashes available in abundance these days, not to mention make up ideas that will turn even the manliest person into one of the female persuasion such as John Travolta who starred in Hairspray. This move certainly limits the boundaries of the word ‘fantasy’, since you won’t be able to play who you actually want to be in a make belief world – then again, that could be a good thing.

Source: Kotaku

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