Chinese players start review-bombing Life is Strange: True Colors over Tibetan flag

Protagonist Alex Chen looking at an off-camera woman who is in distress.
(Image credit: Deck Nine Games)

Life is Strange: True Colors is set in the town of Haven Springs, where a shop called Treasures of Tibet can be seen flying a Tibetan flag above its entrance. That flag is used a symbol of the Tibetan independence movement and is banned in mainland China, which is why it's become a source of complaint among Chinese players on Steam.

While its user rating remains Very Positive, the majority of its negative reviews are from Chinese players. "The game contains elements of Tibetan independence, implying a split of China", says one negative review, and "Tibet is a part of China", repeats another. According to a third, "Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet have been Chinese territories since ancient times. No matter how the obsolete think, they will eventually return to the mainland.I suggest that NEETs read more books, stop being stupid, and find a job to support themselves.Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet is part of China forever".

Previously, Chinese users review-bombed Devotion to a much greater degree for containing a hidden reference to a meme that compared Chinese president Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh. Similar incidents are not always politically motivated, however. Nier: Automata was review-bombed for lacking Chinese language support when it was released in Asia. Simplified Chinese is the most popular language on Chinese, and China represents Steam's second-largest market.

Beginning this month, new restrictions mean Chinese players under the age of 18 are only allowed to play online games for one hour per day, from 8-9 pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and official holidays. That doesn't affect an offline singleplayer game like Life is Strange: True Colors, of course.

As for the game itself, our reviewer Rachel Watts enjoyed it. "Although True Colors has its pitfalls," Rachel wrote in her Life is Strange: True Colors review, "I have never had this much fun with a Life is Strange game. Previous games in the series have dealt with some incredibly heavy topics, like convincing a friend not to jump off the roof of a building or experiencing horrendous racism, so even when there are happy moments, they often come across as bitter sweet, a fleeting moment in an unfair world. True Colors has its fair share of drama, but it also has moments of incredible joy." 

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Read more
Zenless Zone Zero Nicole build - Nicole flipping a coin
'Gooner 9/11' averted as Zenless Zone Zero's butt-obfuscation technology is rolled back in the face of horny outrage
A peasant in Troskovice
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's developer is 'fed up' of being dragged into the culture war: 'It seems like someone is always trying to brand us somehow, and we are just trying to make a cool videogame'
Henry in the stocks
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 rolls out new forum rules to curb toxic behavior, which immediately sparks toxic behavior
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 screenshot - swordfight with man in armor
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 forum rules that banned racism, homophobia, and neo-Nazism walked back by the publisher, which now just asks everyone to please be nice
black myth: wukong
Black Myth: Wukong boss is bummed out about not winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards, but has high hopes for the future of the Chinese game industry
Delta Force's operator Luna Kim
Delta Force's Chinese developer says it doesn't 'have an opinion' on the American military and just wants to create 'fun and meaningful gameplay' with its campaign based on the very real Battle of Mogadishu
Latest in Adventure
Inside
Limbo and Inside studio demands compensation from co-founder Dino Patti for alleged 'unauthorized use of Playdead's trademarks and copyrighted works'
Two characters sitting on a bench talking
Wanderstop review
Zoe showing off in front of Mio
Split Fiction review
Rusty Rabbit chomping a carrot like a cigar
Rusty Rabbit turns Yakuza's Kazuma Kiryu into a fluffy bunny
Pathologic 3 screenshot
Get ready to get weird in Pathologic 3: Quarantine, a free 'prologue chapter' about a young doctor looking for immortality in the world's most miserable town
A young woman's face bathed in light
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1 review
Latest in News
A computer screen with program code warning of a detected malware script program. 3d illustration
Coder faces 10 years' jailtime for creating a 'kill switch' that screwed-up his employers' systems when he was laid off
Project C4 teaser still
It's another day of Disco Elysium-related announcements trying to kneecap each other: Studio ZA/UM has put out a teaser for its first new game since 2019, and it's not Disco Elysium 2
A goblin wizard, holding a dice, and a dice with a goblin wizard holding a dice placed within it.
If you've ever wanted to trap your D&D character in dice like a fly in amber, 3,700+ people are paying Hero Forge close to $400,000 in Kickstarter funds for the pleasure
The PCIe slot on an Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi motherboard, showing the Q-release latch for GPUs.
Gigabyte seemingly mocks Asus' recent Q-release debacle with a video swapping out an RTX 5070 Ti 100 times
Inzoi - A Zoi with blonde hair and blue eyes wears a cardigan and smiles in a gaming room
'I was recklessly brave to even think about creating a game of this scale': Inzoi director admits he now sees 'why so few companies have attempted to develop a life simulation game'
Manor Lords promo art - knight on horseback looking at a medieval village in the distance, viewed from behind
PCG's best city builder of 2024 is adding a map with a gigantic hill in the middle: the perfect spot for your next castle