The last time I checked, Hellgate Guru is a site about Hellgate: London, right? Despite this, we find ourselves authoring news about topics ranging from gaming technology developments, legal proceedings relevant to the industry, business mergers and partnerships, and now government interference with the operation of a Hellgate: London fansite.

Hellgate.com.cn has been with the community since June of 2006, back when the original Fansite Program was still in operation. It was the second Chinese fansite to join the Program and can be found on the HellgateLondon.com link page. Hellgate.com.cn provided coverage of such events as China Joy and by all accounts was becoming very successful.

However, earlier today, Candyman from affiliate site Flagship Forums posted that the Chinese fansite had been taken down by the Chinese government. Sp3tSnAz alerted me to the post, I alerted Vivian, administrator of 21RPG.com, the first Chinese fansite in the Program. Fortunately, our Chinese affiliate is very much not shut down and is probably not at risk. Some Google research yielded recent news on the topic in the form of this report, this blog, and this article. Numerous Chinese articles are available on the topic as well. This excerpt from Radio Free Asia’s report sums it up best:

Authorities in major cities across China have moved to close down large swathes of the Internet, targeting “interactive” sites ahead of the Communist Party congress in mid-October, according to netizens, government Web sites, and service providers.

Participatory Web sites, forums, and blogging platforms came under strict new rules last week. But in an unprecedented move, the authorities have begun switching off entire Internet data centers (IDCs), which are home to thousands of servers.

And now for the most poignant passage in the report:

Zitian Net, an IDC based in Luoyang, Henan province, was forced to shut down after someone posted “illegal information,” according to an accusation filed by the Ministry of Information. As the IDC was shut down without warning, more than 10,000 Web sites were disconnected, affecting millions of Web users.

“Of the 10,000 affected Web sites, many of them are government and business Web sites,” the employee, surnamed Yang, told RFA Mandarin service reporter Xiu Yan.

Yang said Zitian had been told by Internet regulatory officials that the Web sites wouldn’t be re-opened until after the 17th Party Congress.

“They told us, ‘We’d rather wrongly close 1,000 Web sites than let a single Web site post illegal information,’” Yang added.

It sounds like there’s a good chance that Hellgate.com.cn was one of the 10,000 sites affected by Zitian’s shut down. However, if so, then we’ll see the site return to us after the Party Congress ends. With this, we get to add politics and internet law to the subjects that have graced Hellgate Guru’s front page. A cached version of Hellgate.com.cn can be found here.