Devotion returns almost two years after a China-centric controversy saw it removed from Steam
A symbolic victory over a censorious internet mob.
In early 2019 the indie horror game Devotion, which PCG thought was pretty great, was discovered to contain a reference to China's president, Xi Jinping. A piece of paper in the game had references to Xi, the word 'moron', and the Disney character Winnie the Pooh: the latter is a comparison that has been widely used to mock Xi, to the extent that China banned an entire Winnie the Pooh movie because of it.
Once this was out in the open, things began to go badly wrong for Taiwanese developer Red Candle Games. Chinese players began to review-bomb the game en masse, undeterred by the removal of the offending material. Shortly afterwards the game was pulled from Steam by Red Candle itself.
This wasn't just a case of an online argument that got out of hand: the game's Chinese publisher, Indievent, soon afterwards had its business license revoked, while the Taiwanese publisher Winking Entertainment also quietly backed off. Amid fears that the game was being scrubbed out of history, Harvard University stepped in to ensure Devotion and the studio's previous game Detention were preserved in its East Asia collection.
Today the developer announced it will be re-releasing Devotion via GOG on December 18.
Hello friends, we want to share with you– Red Candle will publish #還願Devotion on Dec 18 on GOG.https://t.co/dlC6qzBiHxThe content and the price of the re-release remains the same, for $16.99 / €13.99Thank you for your trust and support. We wish you a happy end of the year pic.twitter.com/peVPd7cyVoDecember 16, 2020
Watch the trailer and you'll get some notion of just how 'nope' this experience is, even without Disney references. Red Candle has been quietly working on its third game, as well as releasing Devotion in a limited physical edition in Taiwan, but it's great to see the return of this title. It's a symbolic victory over a censorious and small-minded internet mob, and as close to a happy ending as this situation was ever going to have.