Hong Kong is warning its citizens to not download or play Reversed Front: Bonfire, a Taiwan-made video game police accuse of promoting “secessionist agendas.” It’s likely the first time Hong Kong has used a national security law implemented in 2020 to block users from a video game, according to Bloomberg.
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.
“NSD again reminds that acts or activities endangering national security are extremely serious offences. Police will ensure that the law is observed and strictly enforced, and will take resolute actions to bring offenders to account,” Hong Kong police wrote. “Members of the public should not download the application or provide funding by any means to the relevant developer. Those who have downloaded the application should uninstall it immediately and must not attempt to defy the law.”
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.”
A ESC Taiwan representative told Aftermath that they’re made up of Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and Chinese people who are based in Taiwan, and originally formed as a way of “connecting with anti-government individuals and groups from various parts of China, including organizations advocating for the independence of East Turkestan and Tibet.” To fund that mission, they started to make games. The game development team is “less than 10 people,” but the group overall is around 50, “most of whom are volunteers without salaries.”
The removal of the game in Hong Kong isn’t surprising to the ESC Taiwan team: “True autonomy no longer exists in Hong Kong,” they said.
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.” NPR reported that, as of Wednesday, the game had fewer than 360 ratings on both the Apple and Android app stores combined. (On Thursday, in the U.S. App Store, Reversed Front: Bonfire was ranked 45th in the adventure game category, with 35 ratings. The game has 328 ratings on the Google Play store.)
Maya Wang, Human Rights Watch’s associate China director, told NPR that it’s no surprise that Hong Kong would make a statement about the game. “Hong Kong authorities must constantly keep finding something and someone to target in order to signal to Beijing that it is diligent and that it is taking ‘national security’ very seriously,” Wang said.
