from the game-on dept
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.
Reversed Front: Bonfire, which released in April, has the player “pledge allegiance to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Tibet, Kazakhs, Uyghur, Manchuria or the Rebel Alliance of Cathaysian and Southeast Asia to overthrow the Communist regime,” according the game’s website. Or, players can choose to lead the Chinese Communist Party. This plays out in visual novel-esque storylines dispersed between simple, turn-based battle segments. Characters with different abilities and skills are unlocked with gacha mechanics.
An ESC Taiwan representative told Aftermath via email, “The content of Reversed Front: Bonfire includes various political propositions existing in East Asia today, not only self-determination and separatism but also the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. We allow supporters of the Chinese Communist Party to defend their political views in the game, resulting in two different storylines.”
They continued, “The fact remains that while we dare to let the Chinese Communist Party express itself in the game, the Party doesn’t allow dissidents to speak out.”
But ultimately the ban hasn’t been terribly successful, as the developer of the game has claimed that interest in the game has surged since the ban in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong’s removal of the game from app stores has been a boon for Reversed Front: Bonfire, the representative said. “The Hong Kong government’s ban on Reversed Front: Bonfire indeed made millions of people, who previously didn’t know about the game, aware of its existence.”
That is certainly the case for this writer. While I’m probably not really the target audience for the game, I now know about it purely because of the Hong Kong government’s attempt to silence the game. And I don’t for one second believe that the threat of police action has somehow stamped out all instances of the game in Hong Kong either. In fact, it would not shock me at all to learn that the ban has created more interest in the game on the island than there had been before the ban.
The Streisand Effect in action, in other words. May China never really learn from its mistakes.
Filed Under: china, hong kong, reversed front: bonfire, streisand effect, video games
Companies: google
