It is not possible to ban a decentralized game, but the government can ban connections to the game using its firewall system. And of course, only China has such strict control, besides Russia and China, I can't think of any other country that can afford it but the US. Of course, the US is in favor of crypto.
Recently, the Philippine government wants to tax Axie players. That is no good.
This has come to the point why the government is hunting those who play Axie Infinity and those who earn big amounts from gambling as they keep posting on social media how much they could get from this. If they are just silent and never do that, the government never knows it in the first place. But sad to say that is going to happen now, if the law will be going to release and approve, then that was the time they have to pay taxes for it otherwise this Axie game will be banned.
It was just a matter of time until Philippine's government made a statement about Axie Infinity since the game is so popular there. In fact, there is no way to keep the popularity of Axie hidden, because even if people don't post their earnings at social medias, they talk about it with their friends, at work and this talk never ends, reaching to the government's ears at some point.
I think the game wouldn't be so successful right now if people had a different approach when sharing their experience with Axie Infinity. After all, marketing is also a very important factor when growing the audience of a product or service. Undesired attention from governments is just a bad and inevitable consequence of the game's popularity.
It could be worse if Philippines' government acted like Thailand SEC, which completely forbade NFTs and DeFi investments.
As Philippines is one of the friendliest countries in the crypto and blockchain space, I don't like to see them end up like Thailand. For sure, Thailand would be left behind if they can't embrace NFTs, DeFi, etc. Worse of all is China, where they are anti-crypto by cracking down on Bitcoin mining, exchanging, ICOs, etc, on top of their "Great Firewall".
I assume that the Philippine government would welcome this development because they realized how Axie Infinity and blockchain games can contribute to the economy as long we are paying taxes for sure. Only death and taxes are guaranteed in our lives to the very end. It's the lifeblood of the government, whether you support or criticize them, a law is a law and we have to oblige.
And of course, Filipinos are still under the "Income Flexing Pandemic" where they can't just stop themselves showing their money, house and lot, cars, etc., instead of staying low key.
