With subway surfing deaths among youths out of control in New York City state leaders have found a culprit to blame — a video game.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and MTA chairman Janno Lieber sent a letter Thursday to the makers of the popular app game “Subway Surfers,” demanding the mobile “endless runner” style game be radically changed or be taken off the Apple and Google app stores.

The leaders didn’t specify what the 11-year-old game had to do with the actual subway surfing epidemic that has lead to five deaths this year — since it is just about a character running on constantly scrolling train tracks and collecting coins “Sonic the Hedgehog”-style.

They only noted in the letter that there has been a recent rise in the popularity of the game — which has more than a billion downloads just on Google — and pointed to an anecdote in a New York Magazine story published in August about the real subway surfing trend that mentions the game.

“This dangerous behavior is on the rise, fueled both by social media posts and by the Subway Surfers video game,” the trio wrote in the letter, which was also sent to tech giants Apple, Google and Amazon, which allow users to download the game from their app stores.

“The game is highly appealing to children, showing subway surfing as a happy adventure without real-world consequences,” they added. “Yet despite the obvious risks, we have found no safety messaging or age restrictions whatsoever by Sybo Games (other than a highly legalistic notice that is buried in the game’s terms and conditions).”

When asked what the game, which doesn’t directly involve subway surfing, had to do with the issue, MTA Communications Director Tim Minton said: “We agree with the mayor and governor and are thrilled they are pushing back on social media and online games that glorify this dangerous and deadly behavior.”

The letter comes just days after Lieber and Adams announced they had reached agreements with TikTok; Google, which owns YouTube; and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram; to more aggressively police their platforms for the subway surfing videos and provide free advertising for public service announcements warning teens against climbing on top of trains.

The advertising campaign is part of a larger push aimed at New York’s teenagers that was developed in part by public school students, which will include announcements on the subway system stations and on trains that run on the elevated lines.

Sybo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Politicians have had a long history of blaming issues on video games. Former President Trump heaped some of the blame on violent video games after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2018 that killed 17.

In 1999, President Clinton blamed video games after the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado that killed 15.