China's Ministry of Culture has stopped an online payment platform, Alipay, which is an independent unit from the e-commerce giant, Alibaba, from offering online purchase services for Diablo III.

Diablo III is an online role-playing game that is the third installment in the Diablo franchise. The game was released on May 15, 2012, in the US, Europe, Taiwan and South Korea but not in China.

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The game, developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment, has a solid fan base in China, where offline PC versions are available. Chinese Diablo fans, however, became frustrated when China was not included in the global launch of the game in 2012, triggering rumors that Diablo was censored by regulators because of its violent content.

This prompted online Chinese gamers to migrate to other servers to play the game, and soon found that servers in Taiwan are legitimately offering product keys to access the game as well as allow the purchase of in-game money.

The ministry, however, took notice of the activity, and cited firms hosting Diablo servers in Taiwan for violating China's online gaming regulations. The companies have since then closed off the service.

The Ministry of Culture issued a statement saying no group in China is allowed to provide financing services for games, including Diablo III, that are not approved by Chinese regulators.

In a statement on Friday, the ministry said it has ordered Alipay not to process Chinese customers' online purchases related to the game Diablo III. It was not the first time that Alipay was forced to cancel services for the game.

Last year, the ministry also ordered the Alipay to stop providing online purchase services for Diablo III