A board game based on the mafia wars that raged in Sicily in the 1980s has caused controversy in Italy, with the sister of the murdered anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone describing it as an offense to all those who had fought to free Italy of organized crime, reports The Guardian.

La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War, produced by the German firm Boardgame Atelier, won last year’s As d’Or, or Golden Ace, a prestigious prize given at an annual games festival in France.

Described by its producer as “a conflict game set against the backdrop of a mafia feud in Sicily,” it was recently translated into Italian and distributed on various online retail sites.

The basic premise of the game is for players, who represent various mob families, to compete against each other to take control of Sicily using tools such as car bombs “to dominate as many regions as possible.”

Merciless mafia battles in the 1980s wrecked much of the southern Italian island. More than 1,000 people were killed within the first two years of the decade, including many civilians who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I don’t understand how it is possible that someone thought of this game, which plays with the feelings of those who have lost their lives serving the state,” Maria Falcone told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. “The mafia has only created death in Sicily and Italy. A game like this offends the memory of all those who contributed to freeing this land [of organized crime].”

Alessandro De Leo, a politician with Forza Italia, the party established by the late former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, sent a letter to Sicily’s president, Renato Schifani.

“This product not only offends the dignity of Sicilians but devalues the daily commitment of millions of citizens who fight for legality and justice in our region,” he wrote.