Chinese netizens recently lashed out at the incredibly popular Harry Potter-themed role-playing game after finding fault with its female characters' strange expressions, which some believe are sexually suggestive and offensive to women. Photo: screenshot from Sina Weibo.

Chinese netizens have recently lashed out at the incredibly popular Harry Potter-themed role-playing game "Harry Potter: Magic Awakened" after finding fault with its female characters' strange expressions. The female characters stick their tongues out after getting "attacked" by other characters. Netizens believe the expressions are sexually suggestive and offensive, as they only occurred in female characters but not in male ones. 

The game producer apologized on Tuesday, explaining that it was only programming bugs and 3D modeling mistakes. The company has also promised to correct the mistakes and compensate players by sending virtual gifts.

The topic went viral on Chinese social media platforms, as it topped the hot search list on Twitter-like platform Sina Weibo with nearly 100 million views and tens of thousands of discussions. 

"The facial expressions are significantly different between that of male and female characters. Female characters stick their tongues out when they get hit, an obvious sexually suggestive behavior, but male characters act perfectly normal," a player said. 

The game studio responded to the problem on Tuesday, apologizing for creating such misunderstanding and vowed to fix the system bugs on female characters. 

The role-playing game took Chinese netizens by storm after its debut in September, as many Harry Potter fans downloaded the game soon after its launch to show support for their beloved movies and novels.

It is developed by NetEase, one of China's biggest game companies, and available for people aged 12 and above. By October, the game had 6 million downloads and had generated a monthly revenue of 2.3 billion yuan ($359.4 million), according to media reports.

Global Times