<
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/06/27/chinese-government-streisands-banned-game-in-hong-kong/>
"When you’re a huge country, and a communist one to boot, the Streisand Effect
is a thing that’s just going to inevitably happen to you at times. China has
definitely lived this experience. The government is the unfortunate combination
of incredibly authoritarian and completely devoid of a sense of humor. The
result is the serious belief that it can control everything through sheer force
of will, when it very much cannot. China tried to silence Taiwan during the
heights of the COVID pandemic, but it only propelled the messaging. China tried
to hide its Muslim concentration camps within online maps by blanking them out,
that only pointed researchers to exactly where something terrible must be
hiding. China attempted a global blackout of a protest song in support of Hong
Kong’s independence, but the result was the same song hitting the top of the
charts for a stretch.
Authoritarians rarely learn from their own failures until they’re out of power.
And, so, they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. The
government in Hong Kong, certainly at the request of Beijing, has banned a
mobile game called
Reversed Front: Bonfire because of its anti-government
content.
Anyone who has the game downloaded on their phone risks an offense, and
players who have made in-app purchases could face punishment for providing
funding to developer ESC Taiwan, according to a notice from Hong Kong
police. The game has since been removed from Apple and Android’s app stores
in Hong Kong. It remains available in the U.S. via Apple’s App Store, and
also currently has a Steam page. As of Thursday morning, Aftermath was not
able to access the game on the US Google Play Store; according to
Bloomberg, it was removed from the Google Play Store in May for issues
unrelated to the current ban. We’ve reached out to Google for comment.
(Update, 6/12/25, 7:20pm–A spokesperson for Google pointed us to an AP
article noting the game was removed from the Play store “because it did not
prohibit users from adopting hateful language in naming.”)
Google’s excuse for its capitulation aside (I’m not entirely sure what that
“hateful language” thing even means, even after reading the
AP article), far
too many non-Chinese platforms are complying with attempting to disappear this
game in Hong Kong. The objectionable content here is purely political, with the
CCP showing once again just how thin its skin really is. And the ban
essentially makes the game’s entire point perfectly."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
