Culture note

Call it "Lunar New Year", and Chinese players notice

Three things Chinese players always notice in a Western game, and none of them cost money to fix.

Wojciech Jaworski (严立行) · 7 October 2026

I found a Chinese Steam review attacking a Western studio for calling its update "Lunar New Year". For Chinese players it is 春节, Spring Festival. Small word, big signal: it tells them whether you made the update for them or about them.

Three things Chinese players always notice

  1. The name of the holiday.
  2. Meme-heavy or machine translation.
  3. Symbols used wrong: runes, characters, colours, numbers.

None of these cost money to fix. They cost someone who reads Chinese and knows the culture looking at the build before it ships.

Spring Festival 2027 is on 6 February. If you want an update for it, the concept work starts now.

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