{"id":111413,"date":"2020-04-10T21:26:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T21:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/361078"},"modified":"2020-04-10T21:26:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T21:26:00","slug":"animal-crossing-new-horizons-pulled-from-online-stores-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/04\/10\/animal-crossing-new-horizons-pulled-from-online-stores-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal Crossing: New Horizons pulled from online stores in China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Copies of <em>Animal Crossing: New Horizons<\/em> have&nbsp;been pulled from online retailers in China, <a href=\"https:\/\/in.reuters.com\/article\/us-nintendo-china-animalcrossing\/nintendo-game-pulled-from-chinese-platforms-after-hong-kong-protest-idINKCN21S11F\">a removal Reuters says<\/a> is the Chinese government&#8217;s response to its use by vocal activists calling for Hong Kong&#8217;s independence from China.<\/p>\n<p>While the Nintendo Switch officially launched in&nbsp;China late last year, <em>New Horizons<\/em> isn\u2019t one of the few&nbsp;games approved and officially available for purchase in China at this point,&nbsp;so those in search of the game instead turn to gray market online retailers to secure a copy.<\/p>\n<p>Those gray market retailers technically ban the sale of imported games, but actual enforcement of that rule tends to be lax and inconsistent. Niko Partners\u2019 Daniel Ahmad has an <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ZhugeEX\/status\/1248495056299778050\">insightful thread on the whole debacle<\/a> that dives into the history and reason for this sudden enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to what&#8217;s mentioned by the Reuters report, Ahmad notes that sellers on the storefront Taobao have been told they cannot list imported versions of <em>New Horizons<\/em> though both note that the prevalence of user-made content critical of the Chinese government is likely at least partially to blame for the removal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Copies of Animal Crossing: New Horizons have&nbsp;been pulled from online retailers in China, a removal Reuters says is the Chinese government&#8217;s response to its use by vocal activists calling for Hong Kong&#8217;s independence from China. While the Nintendo Switch officially launched in&nbsp;China late last year, New Horizons isn\u2019t one of the few&nbsp;games approved and officially [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}