Iranian President Might Help in Lifting Clash of Clans’ Ban

Clash of Clans one of the most popular Supercell MMO strategy games got banned in Iran and has been removed from Cafe Bazaar the biggest local android market. But President Rouhani and Communication Minster might help in lifting Clash of Clans’ ban.

Clash of Clans is one of those popular mobile games that most of the smartphone users have heard its name at least once in Iran. With 5.9M players alone in Iran, you can imagine how big it is in the country. Nearly 38% of Clash of Clans players in Iran were between the age of 15 to 20 years old which shows how much this game was successful to attract the young generation.

Cafe Bazaar started publishing this game earlier this spring and it became a hit. Before Cafe Bazaar providing in-app purchases for this game people would have bought gift cards of App Store or Google Play from local businesses inside the country to be able to enjoy the game to the full extent. The game was one of the all-time mobile game hit in Iran, here are some of the statistics that can support this claim:

The following statistics is based on the DIREC report.

• 44% of the players have a diploma lower educations.
• 40% were students in their primary or secondary education.
• Tehran, Khorasan, Isfahan, Fars and Alborz had the most players.
• 81% of the players have heard of the game through their friends and family.
• On average, each player has spent 13 months on the game.
• 87% of the players were android users.
• On average, players have reached to level 90.
• Since the release of the game, Iranian players have spent 132 billion Tomans (Nearly 33 million dollars) on the in-app purchase or buying other people’s accounts.
• 3 out of 10 players had an in-app purchase in the game.
• On average, each player has spent 22 thousand Tomans (Nearly 5.5 dollars) on the game.
• On average, each paying player has spent 75 thousand Tomans (Nearly 19 dollars) on the game.

With these statistics, you can easily tell that Clash of Clans had a major impact on Iran’s mobile game scene. With Cafe Bazaar providing the in-app purchase for this game, Iran experienced how much traction an MMO game can create and how much potential Iran mobile game industry has.

Censorship

Nearly a month ago, players’ access to the game were cut but they could connect to the game using VPN and other methods of bypassing the Censorship that is common amongst the people. In that time, the internet connections in the country also encountered many problems to the point that the CEO of Iran Computer and Video Games Foundation said that Clash of Clans is not censored and the problem lies with the technical problems with the internet infrastructure. It was only a few days ago that some news outlets reported that Abdul-Samad Khoramabadi of Committee for Determining Instances of Criminal Content stated that the game encourages violence, tribal war and is extensively addictive. After this statement, Cafe Bazaar the biggest android market in Iran removed Clash of Clans from its store but Clash Royale the other hit from supercell remained untouched for the time being.

Even Minister of Communication and President Rouhani are talking about Clash of Clans

Minister of Communication, Mahmoud Vaezi on his official Instagram account told the Clash of Clans fans that he is going to look into this situation. Today we got the news that Vaezi brought up the subject with president Rouhani to solve the issue. Rouhani’s cabinet have a different strategy toward these kinds of issues, they believe they should work on creating good content domestically instead of just banning and ignoring the issue. After all, without having an attractive content domestically whether it’s game or entertainment people would find their way to get their hands on the foreign content which might not be suitable based on our beliefs and traditions.