Life is Strange: True Colors is being met with praise across the board, with many seeing it as a return to form for the series. However, the inclusion of the flag of Tibet appears to have upset a great number of players who oppose the country's independence, as they are review bombing the game on Steam.
As spotted by cogconnected.com, many of the negative reviews on Steam mention the game's inclusion of the Tibetan flag. While online translations are far from perfect, one reads: "We will never tolerate any act of splitting China's national sovereignty!" Another written in English accuses the game of containing "elements of Tibetan independence, implying a split of China".
Breaking it down by language, the vast majority of those written in Simplified Chinese are negative and make some mention of Tibet, whereas it is the opposite for those written in Traditional Chinese, which is used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Roughly translated, many of the negative reviews also demand that the developers apologise to those offended by the inclusion of the flag. The more extreme reviews also contain racists and homophobic comments regarding the characters in the game.
The latter point was unfortunately recently reflected in the Chinese Government's new video game regulations. To get approval for release in the region, games cannot feature "gay love", as this encourages the "wrong set of values".
The mere mention of Tibet as a separate nation is controversial to those that oppose its independence. The flag in particular is considered to be a political symbol by the Chinese Government, in support of the countries separation, and is illegal in the region. This is of course not the first time controversies such as this have erupted. Earlier this year, Guilty Gear Strive received an update that removed all mentions of Tibet, Mongolia and Taiwan from its lore. Before that, a Hearthstone player was banned from the game for saying "free Hong Kong" after winning a tournament.