Hong Kong police allege a mobile game application advocates armed revolution and promotes secessionist agendas, saying those who publish it or share it with others online risk violating national security laws.
Their announcement on Tuesday was the first time they had publicly denounced a gaming app.
It also indicates authorities are widening the crackdown launched after anti-government protests in Hong Kong in 2019.
Authorities have crushed or silenced many dissenting voices through prosecutions under the 2020 national security law imposed by Beijing and a similar, homegrown law enacted last year.
In a statement, police warned residents against downloading the Reversed Front: Bonfire application, saying those with the app installed on their phones might be seen as possessing a publication with seditious intent.
They also warned people against providing financial assistance to the application developer, including by making in-app purchases.
"Reversed Front: Bonfire was released under the guise of a game with the aim of promoting secessionist agendas such as 'Taiwan independence' and 'Hong Kong independence', advocating armed revolution and the overthrow of the fundamental system of the People's Republic of China," police said.
The game application was developed by ESC Taiwan, which did not immediately respond to Associated Press's request for comment.
On the application's Facebook page, the developer posted about a surge in searches for the game's name and a Hong Kong broadcaster's news report about Tuesday's development.
According to the application's introduction, players can assume the role of Hong Kong, Tibet, Uyghur, Taiwan or Cathaysian Rebel factions, among others, to overthrow the communist regime. They may also choose to lead the communists to defeat all enemies.
The game's website says it "is a work of non-fiction", adding: "Any similarity to actual agencies, policies or ethnic groups of the PRC in this game is intentional."
This type of statement, a reversal of a common disclaimer used to distance content from real events, is "extraordinarily rare", according to Swinburne University's game and interactivity course director, Steven Conway.
"Most game developers historically want to distance themselves in very obvious ways, in very loud ways," he said.
"They will say games have nothing to do with politics."
But Dr Conway said the developer's name, ESC Taiwan, ESC referring to escape, indicated the company's political approach "from the games they're releasing, to the very formation of the company".
On Tuesday night, the app was still available on Apple's App Store but not on the Google Play store. The game publisher last month said Google Play took the app down because the game did not prohibit users from adopting hateful language in naming.
Apple, Google and Meta have not immediately commented on the matter.
Win the game, win the debate
Reversed Front: Bonfire is not the first video game with a "protest or activist dimension" to fall foul of authorities, according to Chinese Digital Games Research Association president Hugh Davies.
"Pretty swiftly, they're either banned or people are discouraged from using them," he said.
"During the 2019 protest movement in Hong Kong, there was a whole range of video games that were released."
Dr Davies' 2022 research paper, The Revolution will not be Gamified, details how activists have used video games over the past two decades to organise protests across Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China.
And while most video game activism was from "good-hearted" and "patriotic Chinese young people, wanting the ability to express themselves", Dr Davies said some games "absolutely have the potential to incite revolution".
"China recognises more than most other countries the cultural and ideological power of video games," he said.
"And this is one of the reasons that they have such robust regulatory mechanisms.
"This idea that entertainment products or cultural products have the potential to sow division within a society, even if they're done in jest, is quite often looked down upon by government forces."
Crackdown may boost game's popularity
Efforts to suppress the game may have inadvertently boosted its popularity, in a phenomenon known as the Streisand effect.
The effect refers to a 2003 incident where US singer Barbara Streisand tried to get a photo of her cliff-top mansion removed from an online document about coastal erosion.
Her complaints ended up drawing attention to the photograph, encouraging members of the public to view whether they were interested in erosion or not.
Dr Conway said Reversed Front: Bonfire was already attracting many more reviews, both positive and negative, since Hong Kong's intervention.
"The Streisand effect is in full force here," he said.
"I'll be keen to see how this plays out over the next few days because I think it's really just started to gather momentum."
Dr Conway said while there was an argument that bans or special ratings should be applied to games with overtly sexual or violent material, he was opposed to bans based on political stances.
However, any government's ability to regulate games is becoming increasingly difficult due to the high volume of content being generated.
"We've democratised a lot of tools for production and distribution. I can jump on my MacBook and make a video game and then distribute it. That was unheard of 20 years ago," he said.
"The amount of content generated is overwhelming, just like trying to moderate TikTok."
Gamer disputes authorities' characterisation of app
Kuo Hao Fu in Taiwan, who played the game for about three months, said it used a humorous approach to describe serious political issues.
He disagreed with the police accusations, saying players could also choose to be part of the force representing China.
"The Hong Kong police's actions demonstrate how Hong Kong's democratic freedoms have been controlled by the Chinese Communist Party," he said.
"When even this level cannot be tolerated, it completely destroys creative freedom in gaming."
China considers Taiwan its own territory that it can bring under control by force if necessary.
Many Taiwanese in the self-ruled island expressed concerns about Hong Kong's declining freedoms under Beijing's grip.
The Beijing and Hong Kong governments insisted the city's national security laws were necessary to return stability to the city following the protests.
AP/ABC
