Red Candle Games, the Taiwanese studio whose first person horror game Devotion was not available for purchase after the controversy over a reference to Chinese premier Xi Jinping, put his games on sale in his own online store. Devotion and the studio’s first game Detention are available for purchase now without DRM.
Devotion was removed from Steam shortly after its release in February 2019. The game was critically praised for its atmosphere and originality, but it generated controversy and negative user ratings after users noticed a poster in the game that read, roughly, “Xi Jinping Winnie-the- Pooh idiot. “Xi is commonly compared to Winnie the Pooh in online memes, which often meet the wrath of China’s online censors.
At the time, Red Candle Games said it was removing Devotion for technical reasons and related to quality control, and also “would review the material in our game again, making sure that no other unwanted material has been inserted”. The game never returned to Steam, and Red Candle Games later apologized for its “serious art material error”.
Devotion drew further controversy in December 2020, when CD Projekt Red’s GOG store withdrew from a deal to sell the game hours after its announcement. “After receiving a lot of messages from players, we decided not to list the game in our store,” said a statement from the store. “This is a difficult situation to overcome, but we will not stop striving,” said Red Candle Games in response.
With the developer now selling Devotion for PC and Mac on their own terms, the availability of the game must be guaranteed for the time being. “We hope to provide a straightforward and straightforward purchase channel for players interested in our games,” says the studio in a tweet. It is not immediately clear whether the reference Xi has been removed.