China's Ban on Winnie the Pooh Causes Concern for Kingdom Hearts 3

You may not know it, but China has a weird situation with Winnie the Pooh. And now this weirdness is leaking over into Kingdom Hearts 3, making Chinese gamers worried the game won't make it to their country.

China is currently under a media ban of the well-known storybook bear. This is largely because internet-goers were creating comparisons between Pooh and Chinese president Xi Jinping.

Kingdom Hearts 3 recently released new coverage, which revealed that the Christopher Robin family of characters will be present in the game. So any media coverage of the game had to remove the character, primarily by blurring him out with white. Even then, the source webpage of the header image, a Chinese news source, has since been taken down.

This has led to concern by Chinese gamers that the game will be rejected for publication in the country. Censorship in China has been in a tense place for a while now. A number of games, including PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, have been put under the knife to be made "appropriate" for Chinese audiences. But Pooh is an entire character, not just a texture or audio clip. He can't be removed so easily.

Last week, Sony stated that the game would release in Hong Kong on January 25, with a Chinese subtitled version in development. So nothing is certain.