Earlier this year, the people of Hong Kong began protesting China’s interference in their country.
As Adin Blumofe wrote this summer, the “protestors have seen their rights and liberties slowly chipped away by the Chinese government.” When the Chinese Communist Party enacted new legislation that would allow residents of Hong Kong to be extradited to China and tried in mainland courts, citizens could no longer sit idly by.
The protests have been going on ever since. At times, violent clashes between Chinese police and protesters have broken out.
Now, residents of Hong Kong are taking their protest online in the popular video game “Grand Theft Auto V.” CNN Business reported that players in Hong Kong realized they could dress their characters as protesters, “wearing black clothing, gas masks and yellow safety helmets.” The players who discovered this shared it on a popular Hong Kong forum known as LIHKG. More from CNN:
“While most video games keep the player busy on a predetermined course of action, open-world games allow greater freedom to explore. And it didn’t take long for Hong Kong gamers to begin mimicking the real-life actions of hardcore protesters by throwing petrol bombs, vandalizing train stations and attacking police within the open world of GTA V.
Mainland Chinese gamers were quick to notice, and several of them subsequently took to the Twitter-like social media platform Weibo to call on other players to defeat their Hong Kong rivals.
Using a derogatory term adopted by some police officers to refer to protesters, one Weibo user posted: “Cockroaches expressed their desire to kill GTA and beat us, the war in this game may become more fierce and fierce. Are you ready?”
Other Weibo users responded by posting screenshots of their characters dressed as riot police and wielding guns, with the posts captioned: “Ready!”
Mickey Chang, a Hong Kong player who live-streams on Youtube, told CNN that battles mimicking the real-life protests commenced online, with players acting as protesters throwing petrol bombs at mainland gamers who were acting as riot police. The mainland gamers responded with water cannons and tear gas. Chang told the outlet that the mainland gamers were victorious because they overwhelmed protest players.
Chang also said he enjoyed playing as a protester to “raise awareness” of what was going on between Hong Kong and China.
“(GTA) is a fun way of engaging people with different viewpoints to discuss, since you can have up to 30 strangers on a server that may not know much about Hong Kong,” he told CNN.
So far, no one acting as police or protesters have received any sort of punishment from the game’s makers, likely due to the fact that Grand Theft Auto is a game where players can engage in criminal activity without repercussions.
Other gamers have not had such an outlet. In October, Blizzard Entertainment experienced an intense backlash after a Hearthstone player was suspended for publicly supporting Hong Kong protesters after winning a match. He was initially banned from esports competitions for one year and lost his prize money. That punishment was lessened after the backlash and he was able to keep his winnings but was banned for six months.