The strategy game Plague Inc. has disappeared from the Chinese app store yesterday. Even the developers don't really know why. Of course, there are a few guesses. According to the developers, the official reason for the ban is that Plague Inc. "contains illegal content".
Now the developers do not know which content is supposed to be illegal. They are currently working on contacting China to make the game available again there.
"We are working very hard to find a way to make the game available to Chinese players again. We don't want to give up on you. However, we are a very small, independent studio in the UK, the odds are against us."
The sudden ban from China is also curious because Plague Inc. was published eight years ago and was able to inspire a very large number of players in China. The content must have only recently been classified as problematic by the government.
Is the corona virus to blame?
The obvious answer to the "why" would of course be that at the moment especially rampant corona virus in China, Perhaps the Chinese government wants to prevent Plague Inc. from panicking the population.
The strategy game has increasingly won players in the past few weeks since the increasing incidence of corona diseases. In the meantime, the request was so great that the Plague Inc. servers went to their knees before the massive requests.
However, the developers have also increasingly pointed out that their game is not a simulation of an epidemic progression based on empirical specialist knowledge. If players want to find out more about the corona virus, they should go to the World Health Organization website instead.
What other option is there?
On Twitter, analyst Daniel Ahmad made further assumptions as to where the sudden change of heart regarding Plague Inc could come from. Ahmad is very familiar with the video game market in China and Asia and suspects that it is not the corona virus but the fake news update that is to blame for the ban.
The game was operating fine before the 'fake news' update (even though it wasn't officially licensed to be distributed in China).
China does ban fake news in video games, especially sensitive info around govt / officials.
See extract below from policy document we wrote- pic.twitter.com/gMFMZeborS
– Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) February 27, 2020
This update was introduced in December and just introduced fake news as a game element that spread like a virus across the globe. China may see a danger in this, as fake news in games was previously not welcome.
