Yesterday various websites and newspapers reported that the Department of Culture had banned Sexy Beach (性感沙滩) and Sniff Work (臭作) and four other network games because of "large quantities of obscene, pornographic illegal content which breaks the laws of the country and harms the psychological health of young people". 



The Department of Culture has ordered all websites to cease providing the games for download and imposed penalties on offending Internet companies ranging from a 15,000 yuan fine to the revoking of Internet content provision licenses, which all commercial websites are supposed to have. Tom.com, China.com and Qq.com were among the well-known websites offering downloads of the games. 



Sexy Beach was produced by a Japanese company called Illusion. In the game, users can change the skimpy clothing of digital girls, and make them do beach activities. None of the media reports mention what happens in the game Sniff Work, but judging from screen shots of the game, it seems to be some kind of virtual seduction. The other two banned games were not named in the reports.

In search engine Baidu's listing of the fastest growing search terms, Sexy Beach stood at number two today. Now that the Department of Culture has made Chinese youths aware of the game, they will probably just download it from websites hosted outside China.

LINKS:
Netease: Report on the ban and images from two games
Sina: Images from Sexy Beach
Romantic Chongqing: Large images of the characters in Sexy Beach