https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2020/05/11/chinese-animal-crossing-players-around-ban/

Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the global gaming obsession du jour, is not commercially available in China at the moment, and official versions of the Nintendo Switch sold in the country won’t play it. But gamers, with characteristic determination, are finding ways around that.

The stringent requirements of the Chinese gaming authorities mean that it can sometimes take a while for games to be officially approved, if they ever are. Animal Crossing New Horizons was never approved, but imported copies were available via the e-commerce site Taobao and the game was apparently a major hit. Given it came out in the shank of the COVID-19 pandemic, its appeal as a social space where you could visit your friends within an escapist paradise was as valid in China as it was anywhere else.