When you’re chatting on the free-to-play online RPG Genshin Impact, you’ll notice some seemingly-regular words being blocked out for some reason. Turns out it isn’t a launch day bug; developer and publisher Mihoyo intentionally added some censorship into the game.

Players are now discovering its chat filter subtleties, as the following words cannot be used in the chat input box.

• “Taiwan”
• “Hong Kong”
• “Putin”
• “Hitler”
• “Stalin”
• “Falun Gong”
• “words”. Yeah, this one’s a bit puzzling.

Here is a clip I just recorded. Just in case if this changes for whatever reason here is recorded proof. The entire word "Kong" has been censored in Genshin Impact. pic.twitter.com/JCWjOEUBaf

— Kazuma Hashimoto (@JusticeKazzy_) October 6, 2020

Genshin Impact is a product of China, so naturally the company who made it has to discourage using certain country names in it due to government policy. After all, China’s laws dictate that games cannot contain anything that threatens the country’s “national unity”.

People have asked me why this is:

1. MiHoYo is a Mainland China based developer

2. China's laws and games regulator state that games cannot contain "Anything that threatens China's national unity"

3. All Chinese games censor phrases such as Taiwan / Hong Kong due to this https://t.co/QZ6PerqiTC

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) October 6, 2020

This clearly means making references to Taiwan and Hong Kong independence. Seeing as Mihoyo is a Chinese publisher and developer, it’s not really a choice for them; either they exclude the aforementioned words or face the wrath of China’s regulators.