Google said it wasn't responding to a request by the Chinese government or police when it pulled a game about the Hong Kong protests from its app store
— who say they've seen documents related to the app's removal — the company pulled the app after Hong Kong police asked.
Google is now pushing back at that report, telling Business Insider it didn't remove the app at the request of the Chinese government or Hong Kong police. Google says it removed the game, called "The Revolution Of Our Times I," because it violated the company's policy toward developers that capitalize on sensitive events, like ongoing conflicts and tragedies.
"We have a long-standing policy prohibiting developers from capitalizing on sensitive events such as attempting to make money from serious ongoing conflicts or tragedies through a game," a Google spokesperson told Business Insider. "After careful review, we found this app to be violating that particular policy and suspended it, as we have done with similar attempts to profit from other high-profile events such as earthquakes, crises, suicides and conflicts.
The game's removal is among a string of controversial moves by US companies surrounding the Hong-Kong protests. The controversy surrounds the notion that US companies are appeasing the Chinese government, which essentially controls a company's access to China's massive and lucrative market. Snippets of the "Revolutions Of Our Lives" game that was pulled from the Google Play Store. Obtained from a cached version of the Play Store listing.The Hong Kong Free Press on Thursday claimed that 80% of the profits from the game were being pledged to Spark Alliance, a legal fund for arrested protesters. The pledge was supposedly in the game's description when it was still available in the Play Store. It's unclear where the remaining 20% of the profits were going.
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