retrorealms: From what I can see, this seems to be a pretty lighthearted game that doesn't take itself too seriously and as such I'd say it's far more harmless in its messaging than games where you're the protagonist of a real-world military or alphabet agency with the aim of defending some abstract "freedom" or subjectively defined "human rights" through military force. Some have criticized the game in light of recent Antifa and BLM riots but no one has actually referenced anything in the game's content that would directly relate to these organizations. Antifa and BLM are for that matter not true leftist groups as they are far more concerned with identity politics than with social equality and while they are in the news as of late in regards to rioting, they are neither the first nor last to resort to rioting due to social strife. I actually see far more relation to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement as far as the political message of this game is concerned, more than anything else currently going on in the US. And while I'm not a proponent of communism, I'm even less so a proponent of unfettered neoliberalism and corporate capitalism - so in that sense I don't have a dog in this fight and I'm not particularly offended by socialist or communist-leaning factory workers kicking their capitalist employers' butts. And though I'm generally strongly against the insertion of political or social agendas in games, I make an exception when it's abstracted out of any current political events, i.e. when it's fictionalized, and it seems to me this game fits this bill of being removed from real-world politics while at the same time managing to be overtly political. That is, unless I've missed something about the game's content that has also been omitted in the criticisms in this thread....
To be honest, the game's advertising is what does it...
“Tonight We Riot” is an unapologetically political, socialist game about worker liberation in the face of overpowering capitalism. It’s also quite a bit of fun to play." - Variety
"...for all those folks who need to get out their political anger” - USGamer
Oh, hey, and did you see the flag?
I mean, sure, it's not BLM and Antifa, that's just a nice little strawman. It's also kind of like this other game i keep seeing getting bashed for transphobia when it's really unlikely that the dev has any knowledge of the whole movement in the west, seeing as they're japanese, so some harmless little joke got blown out of proportion.