Squid Game sees booming piracy in China, where Netflix is unavailable, amid Beijing’s crackdown on unlicensed content
- Squid Game has become one of the most popular topics online in China, where people share links to streaming and file-sharing sites to access the show
- Netflix is not available in China, and the South Korean drama’s violence makes it unlikely that censors would allow it on another video-streaming platform
After becoming a global pop culture sensation, the South Korean Netflix show Squid Game is on track to become the US-based streamer’s biggest hit, even in China, where the show has not been officially released because of Beijing’s strict content licensing rules.
While Netflix has no direct access to Chinese consumers and no mainland company has acquired the rights to broadcast Squid Game, topics related to the battle royale horror drama, which is based around a last-man-standing contest à la Hunger Games, have been trending on nearly every major domestic social media platform over the past three weeks.
Netflix globally released all nine episodes of the first season on September 17, but its graphic displays of violence and nudity make it unlikely to pass Chinese censors.
As Chinese consumers have become accustomed to hunting for unreleased content, many viewers turned to myriad unofficial streaming sites and file-sharing services to watch the videos with Chinese subtitles ripped directly from Netflix.
Piracy of the show has grown so large that Jang Ha-sung, South Korea’s ambassador to China, lamented during a congressional meeting in Seoul on Wednesday that Squid Game was being streamed on more than 60 illegal Chinese websites, according to a report by Yonhap News Agency. Jang said he has requested that Chinese authorities take action.
On microblogging platform Weibo, posts and comments with the hashtag #SquidGame have recorded nearly 2 billion views as of Thursday. Last Wednesday, the hashtag became the fifth most popular topic on Weibo’s hot search chart.
“Squid Game is what everybody is talking about now. But this kind of show will never make it past Chinese censors,” wrote one Weibo user. “So I thank our fellow Weibo users for sharing information about where I can watch the show.”
