Photo: Rayark Games website

A Taiwan game company's musical director has come under fire after netizens discovered he uploaded a piece of music featuring the Hong Kong secessionist slogan in Morse code back in March.

Ice, the Hong Kong musical director at Rayark Games' headquarters in Taiwan, uploaded a musical piece titled Telegraph: 1344 7609 2575 to the music sharing platform SoundCloud in March, in which netizens revealed on Saturday that the slogan "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" was hidden in Morse code, according to media reports. Ice announced his resignation from the company the same day.

The musical piece has been removed from the SoundCloud platform as of press time.

The Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR) government explicitly said on July 2 that the slogan "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" connotes separatism or subversive message and the newly-enacted national security law for Hong Kong prohibits any act that endangers the national security such as attempts to split the country and subvert the state power.

Ice claimed in a post on his personal Facebook account on Saturday that the act of uploading the music in March had nothing to do with Rayark Games, but was a purely personal activity. "I decided to resign and leave the position in Rayark Games de dato," he wrote in the post. 

Rayark Games has yet to respond to Global Times' request for comment over the incident as of press time.

Angry mainland gamers have called for the Taiwan company to make a clear stance opposing Hong Kong secessionism on the issue, giving poor ratings for the company's music rhythm game Cytus II, before the game was removed from the mainland's Apple app store.

The game's agent company in the mainland, Dragonest Games, has issued a statement saying that "after investigation, the song in question is a personal creation, is not in the game, and neither Dragonest nor Rayark were informed of the incident, and the song doesn't represent the position of Dragonest and Rayark."

"Rayark received the resignation from the composer of the song after being informed, and accepted it. Further collaboration with the composer will be stopped. We apologize for any impact from the incident, and strongly condemn the action of the composer," the mainland agent said.

The incident has reflected the high sensitivity of netizens and their increasingly resolute attitude to safeguarding the country's sovereignty, Zhang Yiwu, a cultural studies expert and Chinese literature professor at Peking University, told the Global Times on Sunday.

"Ice's unprofessional acts will hurt his career and harm the gaming company for a long time," Zhang said, noting that the company's clear attitude against separatist forces will now be essential for it to win back the mainland market.