Upon learning that in the online game Grand Theft Auto V you can dress your character in a “protester” – black clothes, a gas mask and a yellow helmet – Hong Kong democracy activists began to organize their actions in the virtual world, CNN reports. In order to “teach a lesson” to the activists, players from mainland China acted as police officers and took opponents in numbers.
The Hong Kong political crisis has recently unfolded not only in the real world, but also in the virtual, CNN writes. The new battleground between the fighters for the independence of the special administrative region (ATS) of the PRC and their opponents from mainland China has become the online game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V).
The confrontation began after players from Hong Kong found that they could dress their heroes in the game as protesters – black clothes, gas masks and yellow helmets. Then independence fighters talked about their discovery on the LIHKG platform, a Reddit-style forum that is very popular in Hong Kong.
According to CNN, GTA V is a game “open world“In which players receive rewards for completing”virtual crime“. In this world, dozens of players can combine their efforts and arrange, for example, a bank robbery or car theft. And although the game offers to follow the course of a certain plot, it also makes it possible to independently explore the world. And Hong Kong gamers did not fail to take advantage of freedom and began to repeat in the game the same thing that protesters do in real life – to throw home-made grenades, smash subway stations and attack policemen.
This did not escape the attention of gamers from mainland China, who found like-minded people on social networks to teach Hong Kong lessonsthe protesters” in Game. So, one of the users of the Weibo platform resorted to a dismissive term, which the police call activists, and wrote: “Cockroaches wanted to grind in GTA and beat us. War in the game may begin to gain momentum. You are ready?”
According to a Hong Kong gamer and streamer Mike Chan, after the parties scored like-minded people, several brawls unfolded in the game at once. “Protesters“In GTA threw Molotov cocktails at police officers controlled by players from mainland China. Those responded to the actions of activists with tear gas and water guns. According to Chan, the police won the virtual confrontation, taking the Hong Kongers in number.
The gamer stated that he liked playing as a protester because it helps to draw international attention to Hong Kong. “GTA is a cool way to interact with people who hold different views, because you can be on a server with 30 strangers who don’t know about Hong Kong“Commented Chan.
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