CD Projekt is criticized now that Taiwanese horror game will not be released on GOG after all
CD Projekt is criticized after it decided not to release the Taiwanese horror game Devotion on its game platform GOG.com. The game was already removed from Steam in 2019. Then it turned out that there was a meme in it of Chinese President Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh.
GOG announces on its own Twitter account that it “received a lot of messages from gamers,” after which the company decided not to include the game in its store. Red Candle Games, the Taiwanese developer of the game Devotion, had just announced the arrival of Devotion to GOG announced. The game should have been released on Friday for a price of 14 euros. There was also a page on GOG about Devotion. This has now been removed.
On Twitter, among others, CD Projekt has been criticized for its decision to remove Devotion from its platform, even before the actual release. For example, one person expresses doubts about GOG’s official statement, which thus points to gamers’ opinions as a reason not to release the game. He argues that these gamers can simply choose not to purchase the game and that this decision by GOG is related to pressure from China, or at least the fear that the platform will otherwise have to stop in China or this part of the market will be lost.
A wish list with regard to Devotion has also appeared on GOG, with almost 5000 votes. In it, players express their displeasure with GOG’s decision and that they want Devotion back. In addition, there is a specific forum topic on GOG in which players express their dissatisfaction. That topic was opened on Wednesday night based on the announcement of Devotion’s return, but it soon became clear that that was not going ahead and the criticism swelled. Officially CD Projekt or GOG has not given any further explanation on the scrapping of Devotion.
The references to China as the reason for GOG’s current move do not come out of the blue. In February last year, Devotion was officially released. Chinese gamers then gave massive negative reviews, even though the game was rated very well elsewhere. The criticism from China was related to a discovered Easter egg in the form of a reference to a meme by Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh. Chinese distributors soon withdrew, Red Candles Games’ Weibo account was closed, and the game disappeared from the Chinese version of Steam.
Red Candle Games indicated that the presence of this meme was a clumsy and unprofessional mistake and that it had accidentally made it into the last release version as a placeholder. The company soon released a patch to remove it from the game. The developer indicated that it was by no means the aim to turn it into a publicity stunt. The storm didn’t abate, however, and about a week after its release, Red Candle Games pulled its horror game worldwide from Steam. That would be temporary and related to solving certain issues, but Devotion never returned.