The fans of Animal Crossing series are enjoying New horizons nowadays but there are many fans who can not enjoy the game staying at home. As many of you remember, last week it was shared that in Hong Kong, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was being used to make political demonstrations. This involves creating custom designs with the illustrations of whoever they want, primarily criticizing CEO Carrie Lam. In this way, they manage to transmit the messages through Animal Crossing since physically they cannot because of the coronavirus.

Notably, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is not yet officially available in China, but Nintendo has partnered with Tencent to bring a special Animal Crossing console to the region. However, the game has a Chinese language option despite not having been officially released in that territory yet. Currently, only three games can be officially purchased in the Asian country, forcing many Chinese Nintendo fans to resort to importing both games and hardware into the country using services such as Taobao and Pinduoduo.

Well, bad news comes to us for Chinese fans who seem to be related to this fact, as it has been shared that imported copies of Animal Crossing: New Horizons have been banned in China. The instruction was leaked through Alibaba Taobao’s e-commerce platform to sellers yesterday (April 9) and is expected to take effect today.

Here are the details:

According to the screenshots posted online by Taobao sellers, the ban affects not only the game but all merchandise and related hardware.

Although no official word on the reason for the ban has been released, some users suspected that it is related to the fact that the game can be used to share messages online, such as political slogans, which are generally frowned upon by the Chinese government ( We remind you that the game’s pattern editing mode allows players to create their own messages and slogans that can be seen by other players around the world.)

Bloomberg reports that the game is one of many that is being used to highlight the political struggle in Hong Kong. One of Hong Kong’s most famous proponents of democracy, Joshua Wong, tweeted about using the game to share his message:

It is unknown if the game will actually come out in China after this ban, and if it does, it is highly likely that some of its features will be disabled to prevent players from using it for online protests.

THIS IS A STATE OF EMERGENCY for Animal Crossing Fans in China:

All AC merchandise listings (console, case, games) are demanded to be taken down.

The reason was suspected to be User Generated Content Offensive to Chinese leaders. pic.twitter.com/5zIrrRNyWz — Chinese Nintendo (@chinesenintendo) April 10, 2020

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