Tell HN: Google bans my game for referencing Covid-19, which I designed in 2017

140 points

6 years ago

Hey i heard about the Podcast Addict app, this is sad news for all of us, because the bots are banning everything that could be a reference to COVID-19 which is quite a hyprocrytical move. They changed their whole Google Hangout app to become Google Meet to profit of the virus.

I designed a game about the Pandemic in January 2017, i was slowly developing it being inspired by Reigns and Plague Inc.

After the COVID happened i continued my work on the game and released the game on 5th of April 2020 after successfull appeal to pre-release ban. I even successfully ran Google and Facebook ads for the game Pre-Register period.

Then after a week the game was banned. I appealed again couple of times but without a success. Now Google Play don't even reply to my emails. Finally i decided to release the game on Steam, it will be available on 20th May. I put almost a 6 months of work on this game and i felt that i lost all this time because of this unfair ban, but i'm glad i can release the game on Steam without any problem or censorship attempts.

Also i want to emphasize that the game does not contain any COVID-19 references, nor any medical advices nor any propaganda. I designed it to be an universal pandemic/virus game. There are no words like corona, covid, or anything similar.

Screenshots with proofs that i'm saying the truth: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1RGfllIgAS5hJ2cHhWsmhaotb8H0FgrHy

Source Code from 2018 https://bitbucket.org/PassengerMan/samples/src/master/Cpp/PANGameplayTypes.h

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