Hours after announcing Devotion would be coming to GOG, the game was mysteriously removed from the online storefront. Back in 2019, the game was removed from Steam for what many attributed to a meme that referenced the Chinese president.
Is a Meme referencing the Chinese President to blame?
The meme in question was discovered by players shortly after the game’s release on Steam. In terms of content the meme was a essentially a reference of Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh. At the time, Red Candle Games claimed that it was to “review our game material once again making sure no other unintended materials were inserted in.” However, upon doing this Devotion never did return to Steam.
After several months of no updates from the studio it was tweeted that the game would be coming to GOG.
Initially it was planned for the game to arrive on December 18, however just before that launch GOG made the decision to not list the game on their store. They cited “many messages from gamers” as the reason for this decision.
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
There are unknown aspects to this story, which include the vague messages from GOG and the Censorship power of the Chinese government. Red Candle Games is a Taiwanese game developer and the relations between Taiwan and China can be described as tenuous at best.
GOG has not responded with a response to this story at the time of publication.
