Chi­na’s grow­ing impor­tance in the tech­nol­o­gy world is a dou­ble-edged sword for U.S. brands. As con­tro­ver­sies involv­ing Apple and Activi­sion Bliz­zard have shown of late, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play in the coun­try’s mam­moth con­sumer mar­ket can also land com­pa­nies in hot water around the globe. Issues like the Chi­nese gov­ern­men­t’s clash with pro-democ­ra­cy pro­test­ers in Hong Kong are par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive, draw­ing accu­sa­tions that com­pa­nies put prof­its ahead of prin­ci­ples like free speech.

Fol­low­ing are eight apps and video games that have recent­ly come under the spot­light because of Chi­nese involve­ment, from issues relat­ed to cen­sor­ship to data pri­va­cy con­cerns.

HKmap.live

Apple last week removed a smart­phone app from its online store after an offi­cial Chi­nese news­pa­per accused the com­pa­ny of facil­i­tat­ing “ille­gal behav­ior” in Hong Kong. HKmap.live, which tracks police move­ments, prompt­ed the Com­mu­nist Par­ty news­pa­per Peo­ple’s Dai­ly to ask: “Is Apple guid­ing Hong Kong thugs?”

HKmap.live’s devel­op­ers said Apple’s deci­sion to remove the app delib­er­ate­ly sup­press­es free­dom and human rights. But Apple said the app vio­lat­ed local laws, as well as Apple’s own com­pa­ny guide­lines. 

Apple has deep busi­ness ties in Chi­na where it man­u­fac­tures just about all of its iPhone, iPad and Mac devices. But the Cuper­ti­no, Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny also depends on the mas­sive Chi­nese con­sumer mar­ket for near­ly one-fifth of its rev­enue. Last year, Chi­na alone gen­er­at­ed $52 bil­lion out of $266 bil­lion total glob­al sales for the tech giant. 

Apple chief exec­u­tive Tim Cook has also said Chi­na even­tu­al­ly will become the No. 1 mar­ket for the com­pa­ny. 

Revolution of our Times 

Google pulled a mobile game from its online store that allowed Android users to role-play as Hong Kong pro­test­ers. Accord­ing to the Hong Kong Free Press, 80% of the pro­ceeds from the app Rev­o­lu­tion of Our Times goes to Spark Alliance, the legal fund for arrest­ed pro­test­ers. 

Unlike Apple, Google is not as deeply entrenched in the Com­mu­nist state, famous­ly pulling its ser­vices like Gmail and Youtube from Chi­na in 2010. Last year, the Asian-Pacif­ic region account­ed for about $21 bil­lion of Google-par­ent Alpha­bet’s rough­ly $137 bil­lion in glob­al sales.  

Study the Great Nation

The most pop­u­lar app to launch in Chi­na this year is prob­a­bly one you’ve nev­er heard of before. Study the Great Nation report­ed­ly has been down­loaded 100 mil­lion times since it launched in Jan­u­ary, accord­ing to a recent report from Ger­man cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm Cure 53. The firm also found that the app, devel­oped by Chi­nese tech­nol­o­gy giant Aliba­ba and the gov­ern­men­t’s pro­pa­gan­da depart­ment, has a back door essen­tial­ly giv­ing devel­op­ers “supe­ruser” access to smart­phones. 

The app is used by Chi­nese state offi­cials and in many of the nation’s work­places, the Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed. That has drawn com­par­isons to Mao’s “Lit­tle Red Book,” which encour­aged the study of Com­mu­nist prin­ci­ples for par­ty mem­bers. 

Hearthstone, Overwatch and World of Warcraft

Last week, Amer­i­can video game com­pa­ny Activi­sion Bliz­zard caused an out­cry after its sub­sidiary Bliz­zard Enter­tain­ment pun­ished a star Hong Kong gamer for mak­ing pro-democ­ra­cy remarks in an inter­view fol­low­ing a Hearth­stone tour­na­ment. The online gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty called for boy­cotts of Bliz­zard, with crit­ics accus­ing the com­pa­ny of putting its busi­ness ties with Chi­na over free speech val­ues. Chi­nese tech­nol­o­gy giant Ten­cent has a near 5% stake in Activi­sion Bliz­zard. 

Activi­sion Bliz­zard has three sub­sidiaries — Activi­sion Pub­lish­ing, Bliz­zard Enter­tain­ment and King Dig­i­tal Enter­tain­ment — that are respon­si­ble for some of the world’s most pop­u­lar video game titles, like Call of Duty and Can­dy Crush. At the time of the Hong Kong play­er’s remarks, Bliz­zard has been bleed­ing sales, but Activi­sion was seek­ing Chi­nese approval for its top mon­ey-mak­ing game Call of Duty. 

The video game mar­ket is mas­sive in Chi­na. It is pro­ject­ed to gen­er­ate $36.5 bil­lion in rev­enue this year, just behind the U.S. at $36.9 bil­lion, accord­ing to esports ana­lyt­ics firm New­zoo. 

League of Legends

The online bat­tle are­na game League of Leg­ends was devel­oped by esports com­pa­ny Riot Games, which is entire­ly owned by Chi­nese tech­nol­o­gy giant Ten­cent. After the Bliz­zard con­tro­ver­sy, the West Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia-based esports com­pa­ny last week urged its sports­cast­ers and play­ers to steer clear of “sen­si­tive top­ics” dur­ing a high-pro­file tour­na­ment. 

“These top­ics are often incred­i­bly nuanced, require deep under­stand­ing and a will­ing­ness to lis­ten, and can­not be fair­ly rep­re­sent­ed in the forum our broad­cast pro­vides,” John Need­ham, glob­al head of League of Leg­ends Esports, said in a state­ment on the League of Leg­ends offi­cial Twit­ter account. 

Fortnite

Ten­cent also has a 48% stake in Epic Games, which cre­at­ed the enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar video game Fort­nite. Ref­er­enc­ing Bliz­zard’s move to sanc­tion a gamer for speak­ing out on the Hong Kong protests, Epic Games chief exec­u­tive Tim Sweeney tweet­ed last week that the com­pa­ny will nev­er pun­ish play­ers’ polit­i­cal speech.

“That will nev­er hap­pen on my watch as the founder, CEO and con­trol­ling share­hold­er,” Sweeney wrote.

TikTok

Chi­na’s pop­u­lar teen app, Tik­Tok, launched in the U.S. just over a year ago, but it has already surged to the top of the app store. Its par­ent com­pa­ny, ByteDance, is now the most high­ly val­ued start­up in the world, with a val­u­a­tion of $75 bil­lion. 

Now, the first Chi­nese social-media app to gain trac­tion in the U.S. is com­ing under increased scruti­ny from law­mak­ers con­cerned about its his­to­ry of data pri­va­cy scan­dals and its infor­ma­tion prac­tices. Last month, a Wash­ing­ton Post report found that Tik­Tok appeared to be cen­sor­ing the Hong Kong protests on its plat­form — a search on the plat­form yield­ed few results com­pared with what search­es turned up on Twit­ter or Insta­gram.

Grindr 

In March, CFIUS also flagged Amer­i­can gay dat­ing app Grindr as a nation­al secu­ri­ty risk and demand­ed that its Chi­nese own­er, Bei­jing Kun­lun Tech, sell the plat­form, which it did in May. 

Grindr does­n’t col­lect dif­fer­ent user data than oth­er social net­work­ing apps, but experts said the deci­sion stemmed from grow­ing con­cerns about Chi­nese espi­onage and data pri­va­cy. The com­pa­ny, which had 27 mil­lion users on its plat­form as of 2017, last year was dis­cov­ered to have shared users’ HIV sta­tus and sex­u­al pref­er­ences with third par­ties. It also tracks email address­es, pass­words, billing infor­ma­tion, geolo­ca­tions, as well as mes­sages exchanged with oth­er users and pho­tographs. 

Tech experts said that could make it a gold­mine for black­mail­ers look­ing to iden­ti­fy gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary per­son­nel, who could be pres­sured to reveal state secrets if they shared sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion on the app.