Overview

• Hong Kong police warned on June 10 that installing ‘Reversed Front: Bonfire’ could be treated as possession of seditious material under the 2020 national security law
• The strategy game developed by ESC Taiwan lets players pledge allegiance to factions such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and Uyghurs to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party
• Officials required Apple and Google to remove the app from their Hong Kong stores by June 11, marking the first use of local security legislation to ban a video game
• Authorities cautioned that making in-app purchases or sharing the game online may constitute offences of funding secession or incitement to subversion
• ESC Taiwan denounced the ban as political censorship and reported a surge in global searches and downloads following the police announcement