The Reuters site reported that digital platforms in China have withdrawn the Nintendo game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the latest installment in the Animal Crossing franchise.
The cause was because a Hong Kong activist named Joshua Wong used the game as a form of protest. The activist posted screenshots on Twitter of his island in the game, decorated with banners that read "Free Hong Kong, let's make the revolution!".
The Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism is in charge of managing physical games in China, and the Government Administration of Press and Publications is in charge of approving them. In fact, Tencent barely received approval to sell the Nintendo Switch console in China last year.
For its part, online connectivity for games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons is only available in China through "gray market" platforms (people who buy items from abroad to sell within China). According to Reuters, the game was removed from different distribution platforms, and some others such as Alibaba's Taobao is listing it without a title. The page added, "It is not clear whether the removal of the game is due to an instruction from the Chinese government or due to a voluntary act by politically sensitive e-commerce platforms."
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the first installment in the Animal Crossing franchise that is released for the Nintendo Switch console. The game was released on March 20 and sold 1,880,626 copies in Japan alone in its first three days, the highest number of sales for a Nintendo Switch game in Japan in its first week.
Source: Reuters (Pei Li) via Slashdot
© 2020 Nintendo
