China pulls Animal Crossing: New Horizons from Hong Kong stores after being used in protest
Developing story about the new Nintendo game Animal Crossing: New Horizons in Hong Kong by Chinese authorities.
According to reports, the Nintendo Switch game made the Chinese government and has since been removed from both online and physical stores last Friday. And if you thought the gray market was safe or even resellers then they were in for the surprise of their lives as even those have been removed even in Taobao. No announcement has been made too.
“Animal Crossing is deshelved because the level of freedom was too high??? I beg the government to ban all citizens from speaking and writing, which level of freedom is even higher than [the game],” a Chinese netizen in Nanjing wrote on Weibo.
According to several sources, its because the game was used by Hong Kong demonstrator Joshua Wong who even posted Animal Crossing stuff on his Twitter account.
Animal Crossing is Fast Becoming a New Way for Hong Kong Protesters to Fight for Democracy! The #Covid_19 pandemic has halted public demonstrations, so protesters are taking their cause to #AnimalCrossing.https://t.co/A599kjlYsV
(This is my island!) pic.twitter.com/vjBhzw1nUa
— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 😷 (@joshuawongcf) April 2, 2020
Other players have used the game’s features to design “funerals” featuring Xi Jinping’s headshots, which likely offended supporters of the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. Various images also show a grim portrayal of Wuhan’s lockdown.
In the meantime, if you’re living in the Philippines, you can definitely get the game for the Switch albeit in digital version. Most of the stores are currently closed right now so physical copies could be hard to come by as long as the Extended Community Quarantine or ECQ is still in effect.
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