Earlier today, Eurogamer reported that Thailand’s military junta has banned Tropico 5, stating that “some part of its content might affect peace and order in the country.” New Era, distributor of the Tropico franchise, has also elected to not fight the government’s ban of the game and have since released several statements about the issue.
Thailand has been under a military dictatorship since 2014 and they have since embargoed many foreign forms of entertainment that may clash with their government. Of course in Tropico players take control of a small tropical country as its dictator where you enact policy and simulate a small country under total rule. Both Tropico 3 an 4 were released in Thailand by New Era, but the new regime has since refused acceptance of the game.
In a statement to Eurogamer Kalypso’s Sim Hellwig stated that the game did have a sense of realism about it when portraying realistic political events, but that the game was done in a tongue and cheek way. But he did say that he was “disappointed to hear that Tropico 5 will not be released in Thailand, with both 3 and 4 having enjoyed successful releases.”
Kalypso’s other global managing director Stefan Marcinek also had this to say about the banning of the game, “Our distributor has been working hard to gain approval for the release, but it seems that the Board of Film and Video Censors deem some of the content too controversial for their consumers. This does sound like it could have come from one of El Presidente’s own edicts from the game.”
Censorship is never a good thing in any medium and the fact that the Tropico franchise has satirized this very thing has hit a little close to home for Thailand. We’ll keep you posted on the ban in Thailand and any other news as censorship is important to gaming and the exchange of information.
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Brian Kale
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