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Donald Trump's government has quickly leveraged the cultural power of video games to spread its message in the past, using brands such as Halo, Wii Sports, and Animal Crossing (without permission, it would seem) on social media.
However, the White House social media account has taken this synergy to another, more troubling level by directly linking brands such as Xbox, Pac-Man, PlayStation, GameCube and Sonic to the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s reign of terror across the country.
A selection of new retro games has gone live via the White House's 'Arcade.org' domain. Some of these seem fairly innocent, such as a Flappy Bird clone where you control a Bald eagle, one of America's symbols, but others are more troubling.
'Rio Run', for example, focuses on "border control on the Rio Grande", while 'Build the Wall' is a Tetris-style game that encourages the player to help erect a wall on the Mexican border to prevent people from crossing into America.
ICE has come under fire in recent years over its heavy-handed tactics when it comes to detaining suspects. At the start of the year, ICE agents killed civilians Renée Good and Alex Pretti, leading to passionate calls to abolish the service, which many critics have likened to little more than a militarised police force.
It's not currently known if Sega or Microsoft were consulted before their IP was used in the White House's social media posts, but the reaction online has been predictably hostile.
"Truly a pathetic and shameful moment in American history," says professor, policy consultant, independent journalist Adam Cochran. "If this doesn’t make you ashamed of this nation, you are a broken piece of shit."
"At what point does a government's flagrant disregard for their own copyright laws render them unenforceable as a whole for the general public?" adds @atelierjoshua.
"Genuinely disgusting coming from the federal government," adds Twitter user @yellowno7. "Like actual mockery type shit with some of these game descriptions. I refuse for any of this behavior to be normalized, not now not ever."
Another Twitter user, @SHLUBS1, encourages Sega to take legal action. "Hey SEGA, y'all need to address this. It's disturbing to see your brand and music used for fascist propaganda, and to see inhumane torture and treatment of people turned into 'new video games.'"
Others have assumed (almost certainly incorrectly) that the brands whose image has been exploited in these social posts are complicit. "I’m sorry I’m no longer a Nintendo fan, and that this pushed me away," says Twitter user @gallintry. "I’m never playing a Nintendo game again, goodbye Nintendo."