It’s no secret anymore that the games industry is more profitable than the film and music industries combined. So it was only a matter of time before someone weaponized the notion of video game profitability. Now, mobile games are being used to fund the Myanmar Resistance Movement, which seeks to overthrow the State Administration Council military dictatorship.
The current civil war in Myanmar is not exactly well-known in the Western parts of the world, but it has been ongoing since 2021 in a series of constant violent campaigns between the pro-democracy National Unity Government (NUG) and the aforementioned military dictatorship/junta State Administration Council. Now, the NUG’s efforts to seek funding have involved gamers.
A pro-NUG bank in Myanmar named Spring Development Bank has created a mobile game called SpringBees where players can watch ads and thus give money to NUG’s war efforts. One player who watches something as small as a 30-second ad can apparently raise up to $0.18 per view, according to DW News.
As expected, the game is typically only available within Myanmar’s online space, but it’s effective and threatening enough that the military junta government has restricted the country’s internet access. To circumvent this restriction, Myanmar’s gamers who support the NUG have resorted to the good, old tactic of using VPNs.
Gamers Have Joined the War Effort
This isn’t the first time Myanmar’s NUG has sought help from its gamers to topple the military dictatorship in the country. Earlier in 2023, an IT professional made a mobile war game called War of Heroes – The PDF to raise funds for NUG’s military. In 2023 alone, War of Heroes – The PDF has managed to raise $508,000, with estimated monthly revenues of $70,000 and $80,000.
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The newly released SpringBees, on the other hand, is simpler to play and only revolves around collecting pollen produced by bees before the bear comes to ransack the beehive. As a result, Myanmar’s military dictatorship has become stricter, even inspecting phones at checkpoints for certain gamer apps.
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