
China has its own Hong Kong protest game that lets you beat up activists
After protesters turned to video game activism, a new web game lets players beat figures like Joshua Wong and Martin Lee with a flip-flop or baseball bat


The game isn’t very sophisticated and is pretty easy to win. Here’s how it works.
Before starting a session, the game asks you to select one of the traitors as a target. Once you confirm, you are put in charge of stopping a moving horde of young Hong Kong protesters with the person you selected at the beginning walking among them.
If any of the protesters slowly making their way across the screen make it to the end, you lose. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen. You get plenty of time to hit your targets as they lumber through the street.
While the protesters can be struck down with just a few slaps, the traitor in the middle has much more life and requires repeated tapping before being defeated. When you take down a protester or traitor, the game shows them as arrested. A counter on the side shows how many arrests you’ve made.

Everyone Hit the Traitors is the latest in a line of propaganda games centered on the civil unrest in Hong Kong. Previous games have taken the side of the protesters.
Video game activism kicked into high gear in October when some protesters created a game called Liberate Hong Kong. In this game, you deflect tear gas canisters and dodge rubber bullets as a frontline protester.
But the buzz around Liberate Hong Kong died down in recent weeks as it struggled to launch on Steam, the world’s most popular digital games store.

We reached out to Steam owner Valve for comment but haven’t received a response.
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