THE HEADLINE YOU never thought you’d read said it all: “Jimmy Carter: I fear for our demo­cracy.”

The 97-year-old former pres­id­ent has set the gold stand­ard for post-pres­id­en­cies, cre­at­ing a pro-demo­cracy found­a­tion and trav­el­ing to dozens of coun­tries over the years to mon­itor elec­tions and try to ensure that they were free and fair — like Amer­ica’s — and “unhindered by strong­man politi­cians who seek noth­ing more than to grow their own power.”

Yet there he was in a New York Times op-ed, lament­ing the state of his own coun­try’s demo­cracy, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 insur­rec­tion incited by one of his suc­cessors, a wan­nabe strong­man who wouldn’t accept defeat.

Carter didn’t name Don­ald Trump, though it seems high time that he and the three other former pres­id­ents drop their tra­di­tion­bound silence about Trump’s con­duct and take a united, bipar­tisan stand expli­citly denoun­cing Trump for the threat he poses to Amer­ican demo­cracy. Carter, instead, wrote of “unscru­pu­lous politi­cians” who are “pro­moters of the lie that the elec­tion was stolen.”

Atty. Gen. Mer­rick Gar­land, like­wise, did not name Trump on Wed­nes­day in a tele­vised speech when he laid out the work of the Justice Depart­ment over the last year in arrest­ing and crim­in­ally char­ging 725 insur­rec­tion­ists, tacitly respond­ing to com­plaints that the depart­ment is focused too much on pro­sec­ut­ing the small-fry rioters rather than tar­get­ing the big-fish coup plot­ters, includ­ing the insur­rec­tion­ist in chief.

Gar­land plainly was ref­er­en­cing Trump and his circle when he said that the cases to date are provid­ing “the evid­en­tiary found­a­tion” for pro­sec­u­tions of higherups.

He com­mit­ted to “hold­ing all Jan. 6 per­pet­rat­ors, at any level, account­able under law.”

Trump must be held account­able, polit­ic­ally and leg­ally. But it’s not for Gar­land, who is intent on restor­ing the depart­ment’s non­par­tisan inde­pend­ence after four years in which Trump used it as his per­sonal law firm, to name the former pres­id­ent until he has an actual, win­nable legal case against him. Amer­ic­ans like their grat­i­fic­a­tion served up instantly, but justice — and the rule of law — doesn’t work that way.

Trump must be held account­able, polit­ic­ally and leg­ally. But it’s not for Gar­land, who is intent on restor­ing the depart­ment’s non­par­tisan inde­pend­ence after four years in which Trump used it as his per­sonal law firm, to name the former pres­id­ent until he has an actual, win­nable legal case against him. Amer­ic­ans like their grat­i­fic­a­tion served up instantly, but justice — and the rule of law — doesn’t work that way.

Nor should Joe Biden, as pres­id­ent of the United States, have to take the lead in hold­ing Trump polit­ic­ally account­able. In nor­mal times, that work would be bipar­tisan in Con­gress. Yet after a year in which nearly all Repub­lic­ans have refused to join Demo­crats in either impeach­ing or invest­ig­at­ing the former pres­id­ent, Biden stepped up on Thursday with a force­fully delivered speech in the Cap­itol’s Statu­ary Hall mark­ing the anniversary of the insur­rec­tion Trump incited.

Biden called Jan. 6 a “day of remem­brance” — which is right for the grav­ity of the threat we still face.

The pres­id­ent also didn’t name Trump, but instead referred to him 16 times as the “former pres­id­ent,” includ­ing in a way sure to get under Trump’s skin: “He’s not just a former pres­id­ent. He’s a defeated former pres­id­ent.”

Not only is Trump a loser, Biden said, he ral­lied a mob and then the com­mander in chief did noth­ing as the cit­adel of demo­cracy came under attack — “sit­ting in the private din­ing room of the Oval Office in the White House, watch­ing it all on tele­vi­sion and doing noth­ing for hours.”

Biden also jus­ti­fi­ably mocked Trump and his ena­blers for reject­ing the 2020 pres­id­en­tial-elec­tion res­ult yet accept­ing Repub­lican vic­tor­ies in votes for gov­ernors, U.S. sen­at­ors and espe­cially House mem­bers “on the same bal­lot, the same day, cast by the same voters.”

This speech was unpre­ced­en­ted — never has an Amer­ican pres­id­ent had to indict his pre­de­cessor for refus­ing to accept the will of the people. But it had to be delivered; the danger is if we become accus­tomed to this destruc­tion of polit­ical norms.

For Biden, the address cer­tainly was a depar­ture after a year in which he’d dis­missed “the former guy” as not worth his atten­tion, reflect­ing the Trump fatigue of many Amer­ic­ans among the 81.3 mil­lion who voted against the former pres­id­ent.

On Novem­ber 27, 2016, on a hazy evening in Shang­hai, China, at a glit­ter­ing event to cel­e­brate the launch of Fi­nal Fan­tasy XV Jian Wu struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger at the bar. The man in­tro­duced him­self to Wu, a videogame de­vel­oper who lives in the city whose name has been changed to pro­tect his iden­tity, as a se­nior man­ager from Ten­cent, the gi­gan­tic Chi­nese in­vest­ment com­pany which owns ma­jor hold­ings in ma­jor game stu­dios around the globe, from Su­per­cell to Ac­tivi­sion, Epic to Riot. Af­ter some small talk, dur­ing which the man­ager boasted about Ten­cent’s grand plans to in­te­grate VR into its dig­i­tal store, he smiled, leaned in and told Wu: “We are work­ing with the gov­ern­ment and, when the time is right, Steam will not ex­ist in China any­more.”

On Novem­ber 27, 2016, on a hazy evening in Shang­hai, China, at a glit­ter­ing event to cel­e­brate the launch of Fi­nal Fan­tasy XV Jian Wu struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger at the bar. The man in­tro­duced him­self to Wu, a videogame de­vel­oper who lives in the city whose name has been changed to pro­tect his iden­tity, as a se­nior man­ager from Ten­cent, the gi­gan­tic Chi­nese in­vest­ment com­pany which owns ma­jor hold­ings in ma­jor game stu­dios around the globe, from Su­per­cell to Ac­tivi­sion, Epic to Riot. Af­ter some small talk, dur­ing which the man­ager boasted about Ten­cent’s grand plans to in­te­grate VR into its dig­i­tal store, he smiled, leaned in and told Wu: “We are work­ing with the gov­ern­ment and, when the time is right, Steam will not ex­ist in China any­more.”

For the past two years Steam and Ten­cent have been locked in a bat­tle to es­tab­lish the pre-em­i­nent dig­i­tal PC game store in China. Since 2015 the num­ber of Chi­nese Steam users has in­creased from six mil­lion to an es­ti­mated 17 mil­lion, many of whom were re­port­edly lured onto the plat­form in or­der to down­load Counter

Strike: Global Of­fen­sive. Valve’s store, which re­cently added the op­tion to pay for games in Chi­nese cur­ren­cies, how­ever, op­er­ates in a le­gal grey area. Ev­ery videogame that’s sold in China is sup­posed to be signed off by SAPPRFT, the State Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Press, Pub­li­ca­tion, Ra­dio, Film and Tele­vi­sion of the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of China. Steam, which does not have ap­proval to op­er­ate in China, of­fers mil­lions of Chi­nese PC own­ers a back door through which they can ac­cess tens of thou­sands of for­eign games that haven’t been sub­ject to the coun­try’s strict ap­proval pro­ce­dures. It could be, at any mo­ment, shut down.

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween Ten­cent, which on April 20 an­nounced the re­brand of its dig­i­tal PC games store to WeGame, and the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is markedly dif­fer­ent, al­legedly char­ac­terised, as the man at the bar put it, by con­spir­a­to­rial col­lab­o­ra­tion. “Ten­cent is not a busi­ness as you know busi­nesses in the west,” Wu told me. “It is es­sen­tially an ex­ten­sion of the of­fi­cial Party. They are be­holden to stake­hold­ers but the line be­tween the board and gov­ern­ment is thin. Some of Ten­cent’s stake­hold­ers are high-rank­ing of­fi­cials in the party.” ( Nei­ther Valve nor Ten­cent re­sponded to re­peated re­quests to take part in this ar­ti­cle.)

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween Ten­cent, which on April 20 an­nounced the re­brand of its dig­i­tal PC games store to WeGame, and the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is markedly dif­fer­ent, al­legedly char­ac­terised, as the man at the bar put it, by con­spir­a­to­rial col­lab­o­ra­tion. “Ten­cent is not a busi­ness as you know busi­nesses in the west,” Wu told me. “It is es­sen­tially an ex­ten­sion of the of­fi­cial Party. They are be­holden to stake­hold­ers but the line be­tween the board and gov­ern­ment is thin. Some of Ten­cent’s stake­hold­ers are high-rank­ing of­fi­cials in the party.” ( Nei­ther Valve nor Ten­cent re­sponded to re­peated re­quests to take part in this ar­ti­cle.)

The com­pe­ti­tion be­tween Ten­cent and Steam is strato­spher­i­cally high stakes. Ac­cord­ing to the au­thors of the Global Games Mar­ket Re­port, a bench­mark piece of re­search pub­lished an­nu­ally, the Chi­nese videogames mar­ket is now worth an es­ti­mated $27.5 bil­lion. China is the largest videogame mar­ket in the world, ac­count­ing for a quar­ter of all global rev­enue gen­er­ated by the in­dus­try. It com­fort­ably out­strips North Amer­ica, the sec­ond largest, by more than two bil­lion dol­lars. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port’s au­thors, China will re­main the most sig­nif­i­cant game mar­ket for the fore­see­able fu­ture. While its growth is slow­ing, the value of the Chi­nese games in­dus­try is set to con­tinue ris­ing, to an es­ti­mated $28.9 bil­lion by 2019.

The com­pe­ti­tion be­tween Ten­cent and Steam is strato­spher­i­cally high stakes. Ac­cord­ing to the au­thors of the Global Games Mar­ket Re­port, a bench­mark piece of re­search pub­lished an­nu­ally, the Chi­nese videogames mar­ket is now worth an es­ti­mated $27.5 bil­lion. China is the largest videogame mar­ket in the world, ac­count­ing for a quar­ter of all global rev­enue gen­er­ated by the in­dus­try. It com­fort­ably out­strips North Amer­ica, the sec­ond largest, by more than two bil­lion dol­lars. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port’s au­thors, China will re­main the most sig­nif­i­cant game mar­ket for the fore­see­able fu­ture. While its growth is slow­ing, the value of the Chi­nese games in­dus­try is set to con­tinue ris­ing, to an es­ti­mated $28.9 bil­lion by 2019.

De­spite these num­bers, the Chi­nese videogame mar­ket re­mains, in the west, some­what enig­matic. Few Chi­nese games have found wide­spread main­stream suc­cess out­side of Asia. The seem­ingly in­deli­ble cliché is that Chi­nese game-play­ing habits are fo­cused al­most en­tirely on free-to-play ti­tles built quickly and cheaply. It’s a per­spec­tive, in part, rooted in fact (China, for ex­am­ple, is alone in hav­ing its own free-to-play ver­sion of Call Of Duty). While the cel­e­brated au­teurs and di­rec­tors at Ja­panese stu­dios are rou­tinely praised for their artis­tic vi­sion, their near East­ern coun­ter­parts are broadly name­less and face­less (those whose names are fa­mil­iar, such as Jen­ova Chen, em­i­grated to Amer­ica to make their for­tunes). Chi­nese tal­ent is per­ceived to be found in the craft­ing of ruth­less mon­eti­sa­tion tech­niques de­signed to make a quick Yuan, rather than nee­dle-nudg­ing artistry.

De­spite these num­bers, the Chi­nese videogame mar­ket re­mains, in the west, some­what enig­matic. Few Chi­nese games have found wide­spread main­stream suc­cess out­side of Asia. The seem­ingly in­deli­ble cliché is that Chi­nese game-play­ing habits are fo­cused al­most en­tirely on free-to-play ti­tles built quickly and cheaply. It’s a per­spec­tive, in part, rooted in fact (China, for ex­am­ple, is alone in hav­ing its own free-to-play ver­sion of Call Of Duty). While the cel­e­brated au­teurs and di­rec­tors at Ja­panese stu­dios are rou­tinely praised for their artis­tic vi­sion, their near East­ern coun­ter­parts are broadly name­less and face­less (those whose names are fa­mil­iar, such as Jen­ova Chen, em­i­grated to Amer­ica to make their for­tunes). Chi­nese tal­ent is per­ceived to be found in the craft­ing of ruth­less mon­eti­sa­tion tech­niques de­signed to make a quick Yuan, rather than nee­dle-nudg­ing artistry.

This per­spec­tive seems in­creas­ingly out­dated. Free-to-play games still rep­re­sent the most pop­u­lar and prof­itable videogames in China, but the mo­bile-game sec­tor makes up just half of the Chi­nese game mar­ket. Since the lift­ing of a na­tion­wide con­sole ban in 2015, and the rise of a bur­geon­ing mid­dle class with plen­ti­ful dis­pos­able in­come, the con­sole mar­ket is grow­ing. Wide­spread PC own­er­ship is tak­ing a gen­er­a­tion of young play­ers out of the in­ter­net cafés where for the past decade most games have been played, and into the home, where tastes are, thanks to Steam, seem­ingly ex­pand­ing to for­eign games. Piracy, long seen as the scourge of the Chi­nese mar­ket, may still be ram­pant, but sales of full-price, le­git­i­mate games are in­creas­ing. A re­cent re­port from NetEase, Bliz­zard’s long-time part­ner in China, states that more than five mil­lion copies of

Over­watch were sold in main­land China alone, a record for a so-called buy-to-play game in the coun­try. What’s chang­ing?

Yuli Zhao is vice-pres­i­dent of Youzu, a Shang­hai com­pany founded in 2009 that has grown steadily to be­come one of the top three Chi­nese pub­lish­ers of mo­bile phone games. Zhao, who is 35, was born in the south­ern Chi­nese prov­ince of Fu­jian. Her ex­pe­ri­ence of videogames grow­ing up was typ­i­cal of peo­ple of her gen­er­a­tion. Zhao’s fam­ily did not own a con­sole, so she’d play games with her broth­ers ex­clu­sively in lo­cal ar­cades or cy­ber cafés. “When I was grow­ing up play­ing games was a so­cial hobby, al­most like a fam­ily event,” she says. “I still re­mem­ber the joy I felt when we’d play Age

Of Em­pires, Red Alert and He­roes Of Might And Magic.” That no­to­ri­ous ban on videogame con­soles, which was in place for 15 years, shaped not only Zhao’s ex­pe­ri­ence, but also the en­tire Chi­nese videogame in­dus­try – in pro­found ways. In June 2000 the Chi­nese Min­istry of Cul­ture is­sued a no­tice that for­bade any com­pany or in­di­vid­ual from pro­duc­ing and sell­ing elec­tronic game equip­ment and ac­ces­sories in China. The leg­is­la­tion was writ­ten, ac­cord­ing to Zhao, in re­sponse to the “fast growth of the cy­ber café” and its per­ceived neg­a­tive in­flu­ence upon young peo­ple. “The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment claimed that game con­soles were af­fect­ing the men­tal health of chil­dren,” says Daniel Ahmed, an an­a­lyst for Niko Part­ners, a com­pany that has stud­ied the Chi­nese videogame mar­ket for 15 years.

Of Em­pires, Red Alert and He­roes Of Might And Magic.” That no­to­ri­ous ban on videogame con­soles, which was in place for 15 years, shaped not only Zhao’s ex­pe­ri­ence, but also the en­tire Chi­nese videogame in­dus­try – in pro­found ways. In June 2000 the Chi­nese Min­istry of Cul­ture is­sued a no­tice that for­bade any com­pany or in­di­vid­ual from pro­duc­ing and sell­ing elec­tronic game equip­ment and ac­ces­sories in China. The leg­is­la­tion was writ­ten, ac­cord­ing to Zhao, in re­sponse to the “fast growth of the cy­ber café” and its per­ceived neg­a­tive in­flu­ence upon young peo­ple. “The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment claimed that game con­soles were af­fect­ing the men­tal health of chil­dren,” says Daniel Ahmed, an an­a­lyst for Niko Part­ners, a com­pany that has stud­ied the Chi­nese videogame mar­ket for 15 years.

In re­al­ity the ban was in­ef­fec­tual and weakly en­forced. “In Shen­zhen, we al­ways had lots of smug­gled con­soles and cor­re­spond­ing games,” Wensen Zeng, an em­ployee at Riot Games who was ten years old when the ban was im­ple­mented, tells us. “Even though we didn’t own a PlayS­ta­tion 2 at home, I could

al­ways find one to play on in the lo­cal mall or cy­ber café.” Some con­sole man­u­fac­tur­ers pur­sued cre­ative ways around the re­stric­tion. In 2003 Nin­tendo re­leased the iQue Player, a $60 con­sole de­vel­oped in con­junc­tion with soft­ware de­vel­oper Wei Yen, that al­lowed play­ers to down­load games pur­chased at lo­cal re­tail­ers onto a 64MB flash mem­ory card. The iQue’s de­sign may have helped it slip the at­ten­tion of the Chi­nese author­i­ties, but for Nin­tendo the greater point was to pro­vide a cheap en­try point to China’s pop­u­lace. “To reach a wide range of peo­ple in China, es­pe­cially those in­land who are not as rich as those in coastal ar­eas, we thought we needed to de­liver a cheaper con­sole,” said the late Nin­tendo pres­i­dent Sa­toru Iwata in 2003.

Iwata’s ploy was, broadly, a fail­ure. Piracy of both games and con­soles proved to be a far greater chal­lenge than the ban. Nin­tendo’s Wii, which was never sold in China, was copied by a Chi­nese com­pany and re­leased un­der the name Vii, a game sys­tem that ran pre­loaded mo­tion-con­trolled games. A coun­ter­feit ver­sion of Sony’s PlayS­ta­tion 3 was sold un­der the be­wil­der­ing name The Win­ner. Ac­cord­ing to Niko Part­ners, around 50 per cent of time spent play­ing videogames in China be­tween 2002 and 2005 was on stand­alone games that were ei­ther down­loaded for free, or bought from pi­rate stores.

In­ex­pli­ca­bly, the ban of 2000 did not ex­tend to PC or mo­bile gam­ing. As such, its ef­fects on the mar­ket were im­me­di­ate and trans­for­ma­tive, to both busi­ness and artistry. Within 12 months the value of the Chi­nese on­line videogame mar­ket­place had grown to $100 mil­lion. “The Chi­nese game in­dus­try ba­si­cally skipped the con­sole-game phase,” says Zhao. “This al­lowed PC, web and mo­bile games to flour­ish and evolve, to a far greater de­gree than else­where in the world. Re­stricted ac­cess to west­ern videogames af­ter the 1980s meant that a gen­er­a­tion of play­ers and de­sign­ers were most heav­ily in­flu­enced by the de­sign of Asian MMOs. As a re­sult, PVP game­play is more pop­u­lar than nar­ra­tive-led games.”

In­ex­pli­ca­bly, the ban of 2000 did not ex­tend to PC or mo­bile gam­ing. As such, its ef­fects on the mar­ket were im­me­di­ate and trans­for­ma­tive, to both busi­ness and artistry. Within 12 months the value of the Chi­nese on­line videogame mar­ket­place had grown to $100 mil­lion. “The Chi­nese game in­dus­try ba­si­cally skipped the con­sole-game phase,” says Zhao. “This al­lowed PC, web and mo­bile games to flour­ish and evolve, to a far greater de­gree than else­where in the world. Re­stricted ac­cess to west­ern videogames af­ter the 1980s meant that a gen­er­a­tion of play­ers and de­sign­ers were most heav­ily in­flu­enced by the de­sign of Asian MMOs. As a re­sult, PVP game­play is more pop­u­lar than nar­ra­tive-led games.”

Leg­isla­tive con­di­tions com­bined with so­cioe­co­nomic fac­tors to es­tab­lish free-to-play as the dom­i­nant model. “China is still a de­vel­op­ing coun­try so not every­one has $60 to spend on a game, or pay a monthly subscription to one,” Ahmed ex­plains. “As the ma­jor­ity of PC games were played in in­ter­net cafés, peo­ple couldn’t save their game progress with­out dif­fi­culty, so free-to-play games, where your progress was stored on servers re­motely, flour­ished.” The mon­eti­sa­tion model duly ma­tured much more quickly in China than else­where. “There’s no sense here that free-to-play is a scam, be­cause it’s the rea­son that most peo­ple were able to play games at all,” he says.

The con­sole ban was lifted in July 2015, but its ef­fects linger. The most pop­u­lar mo­bile phone games tend to be based on clas­sic PC game IPs. “PC games have tran­si­tioned over to mo­bile fairly suc­cess­fully,” says Ahmed. “They haven’t been dumbed down to be match-three games. One of the most pop­u­lar games, Hon­our Of

Kings, is a League Of Leg­ends- type game that has been adapted from PC for mo­bile.” Hon­our Of Kings at­tracts more than 50 mil­lion play­ers a day. “What’s pretty cool is that com­pa­nies have made mo­bile ver­sions that in­ter­act with the PC game,” Ahmed says, “so you can save progress on one sys­tem and con­tinue with the next. This method of de­sign has proved ex­tremely pop­u­lar, driv­ing sales on both plat­forms.”

Con­soles re­main some­thing of a niche be­cause of the ma­jor his­tor­i­cal bar­ri­ers to en­try. A gen­er­a­tion was brought up play­ing pi­rated games, of­ten on knock­off ma­chines. It’s a cul­ture that Sony and Mi­crosoft have strug­gled to break since both com­pa­nies en­tered the Chi­nese mar­ket in 2014. By the end of 2015, le­gal sales of the Xbox One and PS4 amounted to just half a mil­lion units com­bined, a tiny frac­tion of the 45 mil­lion global sales of both ma­chines. The times, how­ever, are chang­ing.

Brad­ford Hin­kle joined the videogame in­dus­try as a de­signer af­ter work­ing as an ab­strac­tor for frack­ing com­pa­nies in the UK. He now lives in Shang­hai, where he works as a de­signer on Call Of

Duty: Siege, Ac­tivi­sion’s free-to-play iOS game based on the com­pany’s mar­quee IP. When Hin­kle ar­rived in China, he im­me­di­ately saw that the mind­set sur­round­ing game de­vel­op­ment was wildly dif­fer­ent to the west. “Many of the peo­ple I have worked with in China have never played a con­sole be­fore,” he says. “Some didn’t know who Mario was un­til Su­per Mario Run came out last year.” As well as the Chi­nese-English lan­guage bar­rier, Hin­kle dis­cov­ered a rift in game vo­cab­u­lary be­tween the two cul­tures. “There sim­ply isn’t a com­mon lan­guage for dis­cussing games be­cause our per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ences tend to be so vastly dif­fer­ent,” he says. “This means con­ver­sa­tions in de­vel­op­ment of­ten boil down to the low­est com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor: what makes money?”

In the past two years, how­ever, Hin­kle has no­ticed a ma­jor shift. “Count­less stu­dios are go­ing un­der and many are start­ing to re­alise that you can­not just make a game that mon­e­tises well; you also need to find an au­di­ence that ac­tu­ally wants to play your game,” he says. “I think a lot of Chi­nese gamers are burnt out by the same old heavy­handed free-to-play me­chan­ics. They’re look­ing for some­thing new that doesn’t pun­ish them for not spend­ing mid-game ses­sion. It makes sense that games like Rocket League and Over­watch are do­ing so well here. They scratch a com­pet­i­tive itch that many Chi­nese gamers are used to, but also en­cap­su­late all the highs and lows of a com­pet­i­tive match into a sin­gle game ses­sion with­out ask­ing the users to spend money to be num­ber one.”

The rise of dig­i­tal stores has led to sur­prise, break­out hits for west­ern de­vel­op­ers who have seen their games be­come cult hits in the re­gion. When Ten­cent put the Cana­dian de­vel­oper Klei En­ter­tain­ment’s sur­vival game Don’t Starve on its dig­i­tal store, the game sold more than a mil­lion copies in one month. Steam’s un­cer­tain fu­ture may, how­ever, present an in­sur­mount­able bar­rier to west­ern de­vel­op­ers hop­ing to repli­cate this kind of suc­cess sim­ply by trans­lat­ing their game into Man­darin. “Steam does not have ap­proval to op­er­ate in China,” Ahmed says. “The games don’t have ap­proval. China man­dates that all games must be ap­proved by a gov­ern­ment body be­fore they’re al­lowed to be sold.”

These guide­lines are fairly loose, but en­able the gov­ern­ment to ban any­thing SAPPRFT deems to be of­fen­sive, counter to ‘fam­ily val­ues’, to in­cite ha­tred, or pro­mote vi­o­lence or drug use. There is no equiv­a­lent to the ESRB or PEGI rat­ing sys­tem for games in China.

When it comes to whether or not a videogame is cleared for launch, SAPPRFT is­sues a bi­nary ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Ac­cord­ing to Ahmed a game like GTAV would not pass ap­proval with­out sig­nif­i­cant changes. Yet Rock­star’s block­buster is freely avail­able in China via Steam. “It’s not easy to get ap­proval of PC games into China,” says Zhao. “The process can be te­dious.” Still, this may be the only op­tion for for­eign de­vel­op­ers who do not want to sign deals with Ten­cent, which is ru­moured to of­fer rev­enue share deals as low as 20 per cent to game de­vel­op­ers. “We should ex­pect the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment to reg­u­late or even block the plat­form soon,” Ahmed says. “Any de­vel­oper hop­ing to find suc­cess out­side of Steam should se­ri­ously in­ves­ti­gate whether or not their game will be ap­proved for sale.”

It’s not the reg­u­la­tions that have hin­dered the in­die game scene in China, how­ever, which re­mains small and nascent. Zhao be­lieves it’s an area that is likely to ex­pe­ri­ence growth in com­ing years. “More pub­lish­ers and chan­nels are look­ing for cre­ative con­tent from in­die de­vel­op­ers,” she says. “Two years ago, you could find very few in­die de­vel­op­ers in China. No­body paid them much at­ten­tion as the po­ten­tial prof­its from in­die games were seen as much lower than with big-bud­get games. But now pub­lish­ers are turn­ing to indies to find cre­ative work at a rel­a­tively low cost.”

Few share Zhao’s op­ti­mism. If Ten­cent is able to so­lid­ify its mo­nop­oly it will likely sti­fle indies. With 800 mil­lion in­stalled users on its WeChat plat­form, a su­per-app which al­lows Ten­cent to di­rectly ad­ver­tise to an au­di­ence of a size un­ri­valled any­where out­side of Face­book, the com­pany is able to make its own ver­sion of any up­start in­die hit and mar­ket it in vast bulk. In 2012, one in­die RPG de­vel­oper took to Red­dit to com­plain that their game had been cloned and up­loaded to Ten­cent’s store. Who­ever was re­spon­si­ble, the de­vel­oper wrote, “took our files, re­verse-en­gi­neered the server, and hosted the game them­selves with Chi­nese trans­la­tions. They stole years of our hard work. We have no idea how many users they have or how much money they’re mak­ing, but they have a high rat­ing on that site and they might be prof­it­ing off the stolen game more than we are.” (Ten­cent’s in­ter­na­tional head of PR re­sponded at the time, say­ing: “Our le­gal depart­ment is mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and, if found to be a case of in­fringe­ment, will act on it.”)

“The risk for any in­die de­vel­oper is that a huge com­pany will straight copy your idea and use way bet­ter chan­nels to dis­trib­ute the game,” Riot’s Zeng says. Even aside from the is­sue of cloning, which has also plagued west­ern dig­i­tal stores, there are struc­tural hur­dles to over­come for any Chi­nese in­die. “It’s tough for in­die devs to find huge suc­cess in China be­cause of the way in which reg­u­la­tions are run,” Ahmed says. “There’s lots of pa­per­work to get games ap­proved even be­fore you face mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­bu­tion.”

“The risk for any in­die de­vel­oper is that a huge com­pany will straight copy your idea and use way bet­ter chan­nels to dis­trib­ute the game,” Riot’s Zeng says. Even aside from the is­sue of cloning, which has also plagued west­ern dig­i­tal stores, there are struc­tural hur­dles to over­come for any Chi­nese in­die. “It’s tough for in­die devs to find huge suc­cess in China be­cause of the way in which reg­u­la­tions are run,” Ahmed says. “There’s lots of pa­per­work to get games ap­proved even be­fore you face mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­bu­tion.”

Un­til Steam is banned or reg­u­lated, the store is, ac­cord­ing to Hin­kle, chang­ing Chi­nese tastes. “The gulf be­tween Chi­nese gam­ing pref­er­ences and the rest of the world is clearly shrink­ing,” he says. “Steam has ex­posed mil­lions of Chi­nese to games which would oth­er­wise been banned by cen­sors.” Ac­cord­ing to the an­a­lyt­ics tool Steam­spy, six of the same top ten games on the plat­form are shared in both the US and China. “Once Steam is of­fi­cially banned in China, we will once again see only what is le­gal and cu­rated for the pop­u­la­tion al­lowed to be suc­cess­ful,” Hin­kle says. “Tan­gi­bly, if a de­vel­oper is re­ally try­ing to find suc­cess in the PC mar­ket in China, as long as your game is lo­calised prop­erly and op­ti­mised for a gen­er­ally lower tar­get PC spec, you can ex­pect to see sales in China.

“I think it is easy to look at the mo­bile-play statis­tics in China and cor­re­late that to a gen­uine user pref­er­ence for mo­bile gam­ing,” con­tin­ues Hin­kle. “But it’s a bit like say­ing Amer­i­cans pre­fer Ham and Cheese over a plough­man’s lunch. In re­al­ity most Amer­i­cans have just never had a plough­man’s, and most Chi­nese have never had enough spare room, dis­pos­able in­come, and lack of parental over­sight to buy a PC gam­ing rig. So at present in China, games are still syn­ony­mous with mo­bile phones. But this is chang­ing. With 1.4 bil­lion peo­ple, even small de­mo­graph­ics, by gross per­cent­age, can con­sti­tute a mas­sive mar­ket.”

If Ten­cent suc­cess­fully lob­bies the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment to ban Steam in the coun­try, it will, as of to­day, have an al­most un­chal­lenged mo­nop­oly in the Chi­nese mar­ket, one that could be lever­aged to at­tract de­vel­op­ers, ex­pand the com­pany’s port­fo­lio, mar­ket test its own sales struc­tures, and roll out prod­ucts which can be in­ter­na­tion­ally suc­cess­ful. “Ten­cent is very good at play­ing the long game,” Hin­kle said, who is crit­i­cal of what he sees as a Stateaf­fil­i­ated com­pany’s pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of profit over craft and artis­tic in­vest­ment. “Its growth tra­jec­tory has al­ways been de­ter­mined by where users can be ab­sorbed, not mak­ing games and cer­tainly not by em­pow­er­ing de­vel­op­ers to reach play­ers.”

If Ten­cent suc­cess­fully lob­bies the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment to ban Steam in the coun­try, it will, as of to­day, have an al­most un­chal­lenged mo­nop­oly in the Chi­nese mar­ket, one that could be lever­aged to at­tract de­vel­op­ers, ex­pand the com­pany’s port­fo­lio, mar­ket test its own sales struc­tures, and roll out prod­ucts which can be in­ter­na­tion­ally suc­cess­ful. “Ten­cent is very good at play­ing the long game,” Hin­kle said, who is crit­i­cal of what he sees as a Stateaf­fil­i­ated com­pany’s pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of profit over craft and artis­tic in­vest­ment. “Its growth tra­jec­tory has al­ways been de­ter­mined by where users can be ab­sorbed, not mak­ing games and cer­tainly not by em­pow­er­ing de­vel­op­ers to reach play­ers.”

If Steam is banned in China, Ten­cent will have the fund­ing and gov­ern­ment back­ing to sur­vive for years, re­gard­less of whether or not the ven­ture proves im­me­di­ately prof­itable. Its pock­ets are un­fath­omably deep: in Septem­ber 2016 the com­pany sur­passed China Mo­bile Ltd to be­come China’s most valu­able cor­po­ra­tion, with a mar­ket value of HK$1.99 tril­lion (£197 bil­lion). Dur­ing this time, Ten­cent will be able to steadily grow its user­base, in much the same way it has done with WeChat. Ahmed is un­con­vinced that Ten­cent will be left to mo­nop­o­lise the Chi­nese PC games mar­ket un­chal­lenged; it is by no means the only big suc­cess story in China, and its com­peti­tors have not failed to no­tice the op­por­tu­ni­ties games present. “Even if Ten­cent is able to shut down Steam there are plenty of huge en­trants to the mar­ket com­ing,” he says. Alibaba, the Chi­nese equiv­a­lent to Ama­zon which re­cently be­came the most valu­able com­pany in Asia, is due to sell PC games via a dig­i­tal store, for ex­am­ple, while Won­der Cin­e­mas, which is owned by the ma­jor Amer­i­can cinema chain AMC (it­self owned by AMC En­ter­tain­ment Hold­ings, Inc, a com­pany ma­jor­ity-owned by Chi­nese con­glom­er­ate Dalian Wanda Group) is ru­moured to be en­ter­ing the videogame mar­ket soon. “What­ever hap­pens I be­lieve there will be lots of healthy com­pe­ti­tion and room for growth,” says Ahmed.

For Hin­kle, how­ever, the fu­ture looks wor­ry­ing. “Steam is not with­out its flaws,” he says. “But the al­ter­na­tive creep­ing over the hori­zon is an im­pas­sive, non-trans­par­ent jug­ger­naut with a deeply au­thor­i­tar­ian regime back­ing it fi­nan­cially and lead­ing it by proxy. The po­ten­tial of a fu­ture where Bei­jing’s cen­sors in­flu­ence what games we play is very real.”

WASHINGTON — The White House’s top offi­cial on envir­on­mental justice is step­ping down a year after Pres­id­ent Biden took office with an ambi­tious plan to help dis­ad­vant­aged com­munit­ies and over­haul policies that have his­tor­ic­ally hurt them.

The depar­ture Fri­day of Cecilia Mar­tinez, senior dir­ector for envir­on­mental justice at the Coun­cil for Envir­on­mental Qual­ity, puts a spot­light on both the admin­is­tra­tion’s suc­cesses and prom­ises yet to be ful­filled.

“It was a hard decision,” Mar­tinez told the Asso­ci­ated Press in an inter­view Wed­nes­day. She said that after many months of work­ing on Biden’s envir­on­mental policy, she needed time to rest and be with her fam­ily.

Col­leagues at the White House and in Con­gress say her depar­ture is a loss since she played a pivotal role in cen­ter­ing dis­ad­vant­aged com­munit­ies in Biden’s envir­on­mental and cli­mate policies.

“Her cred­ib­il­ity in terms of envir­on­mental issues — in par­tic­u­lar envir­on­mental justice issues — is going to be missed,” Rep. Raul M. Gri­jalva (D-Ariz.) said.

Mar­tinez helped develop then-can­did­ate Biden’s envir­on­mental justice agenda while he was cam­paign­ing by set­ting up meet­ings between his team and key envir­on­mental justice lead­ers from around the coun­try. She went on to over­see a review of the Coun­cil on Envir­on­mental Qual­ity as part of Biden’s trans­ition team and was appoin­ted as the top­rank­ing offi­cial on envir­on­mental justice in his admin­is­tra­tion.

“Cecilia has been the heart, soul, and mind of the most ambi­tious envir­on­mental justice agenda ever adop­ted by a Pres­id­ent,” Brenda Mal­lory, chair of the Coun­cil of Envir­on­mental Qual­ity, said in a state­ment. “She is an unwaver­ing and effect­ive cham­pion for the com­munit­ies that, for far too long, have been over­burdened by pol­lu­tion and left out of gov­ern­ment decisions that affect them.”

“Cecilia has been the heart, soul, and mind of the most ambi­tious envir­on­mental justice agenda ever adop­ted by a Pres­id­ent,” Brenda Mal­lory, chair of the Coun­cil of Envir­on­mental Qual­ity, said in a state­ment. “She is an unwaver­ing and effect­ive cham­pion for the com­munit­ies that, for far too long, have been over­burdened by pol­lu­tion and left out of gov­ern­ment decisions that affect them.”

Through exec­ut­ive orders and legis­la­tion, the admin­is­tra­tion has tried to dir­ect resources toward dis­ad­vant­aged com­munit­ies, develop tools to mon­itor cli­mate and eco­nomic justice and pass reg­u­la­tions to clean up the envir­on­ment.

Some of that was accom­plished. The White House’s Justice40 ini­ti­at­ive man­dated that 40% of bene­fits from fed­eral invest­ments in sus­tain­able and green infra­struc­ture, such as clean energy, pol­lu­tion cleanup and water improve­ments, go to dis­ad­vant­aged com­munit­ies.

The admin­is­tra­tion also cre­ated a map­ping tool to help identify com­munit­ies most in need of such invest­ments.

And the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has restored dozens of envir­on­mental reg­u­la­tions rolled back dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing rules that limit the amount of toxic waste com­ing from coal plants, require extens­ive envir­on­mental reviews of major infra­struc­ture projects and pro­tect endangered wild­life.

Mar­tinez was cent­ral to much of that pro­gress, but she and oth­ers in the White House say much more work remains. She said every­one she has worked with on the fed­eral level is “very much inter­ested in com­munit­ies hold­ing us account­able.”

year ago this week, the world watched as hun­dreds of pro­test­ers, angry about the pres­id­en­tial elec­tion res­ults, broke through bar­ri­ers and police lines to force their way into the U.S. Cap­itol. They beat officers with the officers’ own shields, turned flag­poles into clubs and spears, smashed win­dows and doused police with chem­ical sprays.

Some rioters ran­sacked offices and rifled through law­makers’ desks. Oth­ers chanted “Hang Mike Pence” and shouted for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. More than 700 have since been charged with crimes.

An estim­ated 140 police officers were injured. Four died by sui­cide in the days and weeks after. Five people died dur­ing or soon after the event, although not all their deaths have been dir­ectly linked to the riot. One woman, Ashli Bab­bitt, was shot and killed by Cap­itol police as she tried to enter the House cham­ber.

“Noth­ing in my exper­i­ence in the Army or as a law enforce­ment officer pre­pared me for what we con­fron­ted on Jan. 6,” Cap­itol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gon­ell, an Army vet­eran, told a House panel. He said hand-to-hand com­bat with the rioters was like a “medi­eval” battle.

These facts can’t be dis­puted. But how we remem­ber or inter­pret that day is. A slew of recent polls show just how divided we are.

A USA TODAY/Suf­folk Uni­versity poll found more than 8 in 10 Repub­lic­ans, Demo­crats and inde­pend­ents say they are wor­ried about the future of Amer­ica’s demo­cracy. But, our story said, they dis­agree on whether the Jan. 6 mob rep­res­en­ted an effort to under­mine demo­cracy or to fix it. Eighty-five per­cent of Demo­crats call the rioters “crim­in­als.” Two-thirds of Repub­lic­ans say, “They went too far, but they had a point.”

A USA TODAY/Suf­folk Uni­versity poll found more than 8 in 10 Repub­lic­ans, Demo­crats and inde­pend­ents say they are wor­ried about the future of Amer­ica’s demo­cracy. But, our story said, they dis­agree on whether the Jan. 6 mob rep­res­en­ted an effort to under­mine demo­cracy or to fix it. Eighty-five per­cent of Demo­crats call the rioters “crim­in­als.” Two-thirds of Repub­lic­ans say, “They went too far, but they had a point.”

An ABC/Ipsos poll showed that 96% of Demo­crats believe those involved in the attacks were threat­en­ing demo­cracy. Among Repub­lic­ans, 45% say the event was a threat to demo­cracy; 52% say those involved were “pro­tect­ing demo­cracy.”

An AP/NORC poll showed that 29% of Repub­lic­ans say the Cap­itol riot was “not very or not at all viol­ent.” That’s com­pared to 1% of Demo­crats and 14% of inde­pend­ents.

And in an NPR/Ispos poll, 30% of Repub­lic­ans agree with the state­ment, “The Jan. 6th events were actu­ally car­ried out by oppon­ents of Don­ald Trump, includ­ing antifa and gov­ern­ment agents,” com­pared to 8% of Demo­crats and 12% of inde­pend­ents.

“What I think is chilling is not just that we’re divided in par­tisan ways, because that’s something that’s been very famil­iar, it is that we’re divided on something where there is a story that is true and a story that is false,” said USA TODAY Wash­ing­ton Bur­eau Chief Susan Page.

“You can be divided on what the right kind of health care policy is. We should not be divided on what happened on Janu­ary 6th, because we can see what happened. We have pic­tures and video of what happened and the testi­mony of people who were there. And that is what makes this of such con­cern because it’s people basic­ally deny­ing the truth that is in front of their face.”

Con­gress is divided as well. USA TODAY inter­viewed more than 120 law­makers who were in the Cap­itol that day.

Clout knows you’ve heard this before: A new rivalry is rising among Demo­crats in North­east Philly.

The party has been in a fac­tional fracas there that went pub­lic back in 2015 and flares up when a post with power is up for grabs. This time, it’s a seat in the state Sen­ate. But that’s just for starters.

John Sabat­ina Jr. resigned in the Sen­ate’s 5th Dis­trict last Fri­day and was sworn in Monday as a Com­mon Pleas Court judge.

Lt. Gov. John Fet­ter­man has 10 days from the resig­na­tion to call a spe­cial elec­tion for someone to com­plete Sabat­ina’s Sen­ate term, which runs through 2024.

State Rep. Ed Neilson and Shawn Dillon, the 66A Ward leader, are the front-run­ners to be selec­ted in a meet­ing Monday of eight Demo­cratic ward lead­ers with divi­sions in the 5th Dis­trict.

Clout hears Dillon has the edge. But this is North­east Philly. Break out The God­father ref­er­ences.

“We’ve got a couple of Tes­sios in that crowd that are com­mit­ted to both sides,” said Bob Brady, who chairs the Demo­cratic City Com­mit­tee.

Sal­vatore Tessio, a capore­gime in the film’s Cor­le­one crime fam­ily, pre­ten­ded to be loyal in a loom­ing mob war while secretly plot­ting with the enemy. Spoiler: It doesn’t end well for him.

Jim Don­nelly, leader of the 58th Ward, backs Dillon. Sabat­ina’s father, 56th Ward leader

John Sabat­ina Sr., backs Neilson. Their wards have the most divi­sions in the 5th Dis­trict.

Again, this is North­east Philly. There has to be more than one twist.

Again, this is North­east Philly. There has to be more than one twist.

Don­nelly is also brother-in-law to former Lt. Gov. Mike Stack

III, who went to Cali­for­nia to try his hand at act­ing but then came home and expressed interest in the Sen­ate seat, which he held for 14 years.

Every­one Clout talked to — Brady, Sabat­ina Sr., Don­nelly, Dillon, and Neilson — said Stack is not in the run­ning. Still, his name will be on Monday’s bal­lot.

While Dillon is run­ning strong, Clout urges cau­tion in count­ing out Neilson, who won three spe­cial elec­tions in four years from 2012 to 2015 for state House and City Coun­cil seats.

State Rep. Mike Driscoll sug­gests he could be a “com­prom­ise can­did­ate” for the Sen­ate seat if Dillon and Neilson are dead­locked. But Clout hears Driscoll is more

likely to be selec­ted as a spe­cial elec­tion can­did­ate for the vacancy when City Coun­cil­mem­ber Bobby

Henon resigns.

Henon is due to be sen­tenced in Feb­ru­ary for his fed­eral bribery con­vic­tion in Novem­ber with Elec­tri­cians Union leader John

“Johnny Doc” Dougherty.

Expect more vacan­cies. If Neilson and/or Driscoll take new jobs, their House seats will be up for grabs.

State Rep. Mar­tina White, chair of the Repub­lican City Com­mit­tee, said her party is still inter­view­ing can­did­ates.

Demo­crats hold a 2-1 voter regis­tra­tion advant­age over Repub­lic­ans

in the 5th Dis­trict as cur­rently drawn and in a pro­posed new map as part of the state’s decen­nial redis­trict­ing pro­cess.

BRUSSELS — After long indul­ging him, lead­ers in the European Union now widely con­sider Prime Min­is­ter Viktor Orban of Hun­gary an exist­en­tial threat to a bloc that holds itself up as a model of human rights and the rule of law.

Orban has spent the past dec­ade stead­ily build­ing his “illiberal state,” as he calls Hun­gary, with the help of lav­ish EU fund­ing. Even as his project widened fis­sures in the bloc, which Hun­gary joined in 2004, his fel­low national lead­ers mostly looked the other way, com­mit­ted to stay­ing out of one another’s affairs.

But Orban’s defi­ance and intransigence has had an import­ant, if unin­ten­ded, effect: serving as a cata­lyst for an often-slug­gish EU sys­tem to act to safe­guard demo­cratic prin­ciples that under­pin the bloc.

Early this year, the European Court of Justice will issue a land­mark decision on whether the union has the author­ity to make its funds to mem­ber states con­di­tional on meet­ing the bloc’s core val­ues. Doing so would allow Brus­sels to deny bil­lions of euros to coun­tries that viol­ate those val­ues.

The bloc has con­sist­ently worked on polit­ical con­sensus among national lead­ers. But Orban has pushed Brus­sels toward a threshold it had long avoided: mak­ing mem­ber­ship sub­ject to fin­an­cial pun­ish­ments, not merely polit­ical ones.

The new fron­tier could help solve an old prob­lem — what to do about bad act­ors in its ranks — while cre­at­ing new ones. Not least, it could invite the European Com­mis­sion, the bloc’s exec­ut­ive branch, to exer­cise a new level of inter­fer­ence in the affairs of mem­ber states.

How Orban has forced the EU to such a junc­ture, and why it seemed help­less to stop him for so long, says much about the bloc’s found­ing assump­tions and why it has stumbled in the face of pop­u­list and nation­al­ist chal­lenges.

Inter­views with more than a dozen cur­rent and former European offi­cials show how sen­ti­ments toward Orban and his illiberal project evolved from com­pla­cency and incom­pre­hen­sion to a recog­ni­tion that he had become a ser­i­ous internal threat — des­pite Hun­gary hav­ing fewer people than the Paris met­ro­pol­itan area and a lan­guage that it bears no rela­tion­ship to those of its neigh­bors.

The will­ful neg­lect was encap­su­lated in 2015 at a meet­ing, when Jean-Claude Jun­cker, then the European Com­mis­sion’s pres­id­ent, saw Orban arriv­ing and said, “The dic­tator is com­ing,” before giv­ing him a friendly pat on the face.

No one in power wanted to con­front Orban over issues like rule of law and cor­rup­tion — espe­cially not his fel­low national lead­ers, who each have a seat on the power­ful European Coun­cil.

“At the coun­cil myself I felt the reluct­ance of Orban’s peers to deal with these kind of issues,” said Luuk van Mid­de­laar, an aide to Her­man Van Rompuy when he was coun­cil pres­id­ent. He added that the coun­cil was “like a club, where Viktor is just one of them — and they are polit­ical anim­als, and they respect each other for the simple fact of hav­ing won an elec­tion.”

Orban faces new elec­tions this spring against a form­ally united but very diverse set of oppos­i­tion parties. But he has become a model for the polit­ics of iden­tity and reli­gion, not just in Poland but in the United States, as well.