Ndemic Creations announced that the plague simulation game, aptly named Plague Inc., has been banned in China because the content is claimed to be “illegal”.

The news had been spread around before, but it was until February 27th, 2020 that an official statement about the matter was made over on the official Ndemic Creations website.

The developers explained in the short post…

“We have some very sad news to share with our China based players. We’ve just been informed that Plague Inc. “includes content that is illegal in China as determined by the Cyberspace Administration of China” and has been removed from the China App Store. This situation is completely out of our control.

 

“[…] It’s not clear to us if this removal is linked to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak that China is facing. However, Plague Inc.’s educational importance has been repeatedly recognised by organisations like the CDC and we are currently working with major global health organisations to determine how we can best support their efforts to contain and control COVID-19.”

The ban only came shortly after Plague Inc.’s popularity skyrocketed as gamers began simulating the spread of the coronavirus that started from out of Wuhan, China.

If you check the Steam Charts you’ll see that there was a pretty massive spike in the early half of February to coincide with the initial reports of the contagion spreading throughout China.

Ndemic won’t be giving up so easily, though. They are attempting to contact the Cyberspace Administration of China to find out why the game was labeled as “illegal” and what they could do to restore the title for Chinese gamers…

“We are working very hard to try and find a way to get the game back in the hands of Chinese players – we don’t want to give up on you – however, as a tiny independent games studio in the UK, the odds are stacked against us. Our immediate priority is to try and make contact with the Cyberspace Administration of China to understand their concerns and work with them to find a resolution.”

In the meantime, anyone who isn’t in China can continue to access the game and run simulations on how to further make the coronavirus spread like crazy or attempt to find ways to quarantine it. I’m pretty sure one way of easily getting through security protocols is using the media to misinform the public by convincing governments not to implement lockdown procedures all to avoid being labeled as “racist”. Can you imagine if that’s how civilization ends?

(Thanks for the news tip MaverickHL)