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A new Steam game lets you fight as a Hong Kong protester
Liberate Hong Kong was inspired by Blizzard’s Blitzchung controversy, and now it’s making Steam the next battleground for protesters
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
After almost five months, scenes of protesters running from riot police through streets filled with makeshift barricades are all too familiar to anyone living in Hong Kong. Now, an upcoming VR game aims to let people outside the city experience life as a front-line protester.
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From the name alone, it’s clear where Liberate Hong Kong’s loyalties lie. To the developer, the game isn’t a game; it is itself a part of the protest movement, taking the fight beyond the streets of Hong Kong and to online gaming platforms like Steam.
The game is slated to launch on Steam as early as November, when another pro-protest game -- a dystopian visual novel called Karma -- is also set to be released on the same platform.
It’s not the first time games and politics have mixed. It’s not even the first time games and the Hong Kong protests have mixed. Last month, Hearthstone esports player Blitzchung said a Hong Kong protest slogan in a post-game interview, earning him a hefty fine and a ban. And Google decided to pull a pro-protest game called The Revolution of Our Times from the Google Play Store for violating the platform’s “sensitive events policy.”
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But it may create an awkward situation for Steam. The platform has long been known for an extremely hands-off approach to regulating content, and the backlash against Blizzard shows that gamers in the West are willing to speak out against what they see as appeasement of China. But Steam also has an estimated 30 million users in China, a country where it does not officially operate, and where people are very much against the protests.
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