The Nintendo Switch game Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been removed from sale on Web sites in China, after it was used by Hong Kong activists to spread pro-democracy messages.
The popular game disappeared from the Alibaba-owned Taobao Web site last week.
The game allows users to decorate their game environment with a pattern creation tool, which some players have used to create politically sensitive images and slogans which they screenshot and share on social media.
Photo: Reuters
Some posts related to the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and attacked Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
One high-profile activist, Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), last week shared a screenshot on Twitter of his own in-game island with a banner reading “Free Hong Kong, revolution now.”
“For lots of people around the world who play this game, they have to put their ideal life into the game,” Wong said. “And for Hong Kongers, we have to put our protest movement and our protest sites inside the game.”
It is unclear whether sales were removed under specific direction from the Chinese government, and there has been no official announcement from authorities.
The tech news site Ping West said a message was sent to sellers on Taobao late on Thursday, ordering a ban on sales of all Animal Crossing products.
While the game was not officially available in China, many people bought parallel imported consoles from gray market commerce sites such as Taobao.
After the game disappeared from Chinese sellers, Wong said users began blaming him.
Daniel Ahmad, a gaming analyst and writer, said the removal of Animal Crossing was “complicated,” but was essentially the enforcement of a 2017 policy.
“Taobao ‘banned’ the sale of imported video game discs and cartridges back in 2017, but this is something that hasn’t really been enforced all that much, only on select games,” he said on Twitter.
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