China Has a History of Censorship
Whether it’s banning TV shows that feature time travel or Genshin Impact’s chat filtering out words like Taiwan, the country routinely censors anything which is critical of the regime or its president, Xi Jinping. The latest thing to be removed is, a meme comparing Xi Jinping to beloved character, Winnie the Pooh, and horror game Devotion is the latest victim.
The game from Detention creators Red Candle Games follows a family embroiled in a religious cult in the 1980’s, and was removed from steam six days after its release after such a meme was found within it, leading to a massive review bombing campaign. The game was announced for release on GOG, another gaming service, yesterday, with the game set to release tomorrow, but GOG have rolled back the release following many complaints from players.
We don’t know at this point whether the offending meme has been removed, since the game never got a GOG release and the game was removed from Valve’s platform before the developers had a chance to remove it, but the game’s controversy has been enough to kill the game (for the meantime) without it. Sadly for horror fans the game never got an English release, so in the meantime, your only hope of playing the game legally is tracking down a physical copy, which was released in Chinese in Taiwan. It’s a shame because, before the review bombing, the game had an overwhelmingly positive reception on Steam, and was named among the best games of 2019 by sites like Polygon. It’s worth noting that with Red Candle Candle Games previous game Detention recently getting a Netflix adaptation demand could be high for Devotion, so don’t rule out seeing it in the future.
Earlier today, it was announced that the game Devotion is coming to GOG. After receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store.
— GOG.COM (@GOGcom) December 16, 2020
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