Taiwanese blacklisted game again for Xi Jinping’s mockery

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Devotion, a horror video game created by Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games, which was blacklisted and banned shortly after its release in February 2019 because it apparently contained an insult to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, was again ripped from digital store shelves before anyone has a chance to buy it.

Devotion is a strange game in which players explore a haunted apartment complex in Taiwan in the 1980s. Some reviewers who were given the chance to play it gave it good grades, praising them annoying atmosphere and captivating plot. The game offers a restless but relatively non-violent experience, somewhat like popular horror movies Insidious or The Conjuring.

Previous game of Red Candle, Detention, It is also well seen and was adapted into a movie in 2019. Devotion was highly anticipated as the next project in the Taiwan game studio, but then someone noticed a piece of paper pinned to a wall inside the game, which compared Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh and called him an “idiot.”

The round leader of the Chinese Communist Party is extremely sensitive to comparisons with the famous cartoon bear, to the point where it was Winnie the Pooh forbidden all over China. Pooh memes became very popular among Chinese dissidents before the huge censorship apparatus of the Communist Party began to eliminate them.

Once the rather obscure image that insults Xi was discovered and spread on social media, Chinese users began flooding websites with negative reviews of Devotion, a practice known as “review-bombing”. The game’s aggregate scores for quality have declined due to these politically organized negative reviews, which can threaten sales.

Games with red candles he apologized for the image, he explained that there was a bit of “substitute” text left accidentally in the game and removed the reference to Xi from the game. This was a plausible explanation, given that the game is set in the 1980s, long before Xi Jinping’s rise to power or the beginning of the Winnie the Pooh meme (which began with a photo of Xi walking next to former US President Barack Obama and compared them to Pooh and his weak, vigorous friend, tiger, Tigger).

The apology and editing of the game didn’t help, as the bombing review continued and even spread to the other Red Candle game. Detention. Chinese users have begun to discover other minor details of Devotion they found it offensive.

The Red Candle gave in to the pressure and removed Devotion from the popular online game store Steam six days after it was put up for sale, citing “technical issues” and a desire to “ease the increased pressure in our community.” The developers have suggested that additional changes could be made to the game to remove any “other unintentional material” that may have crept in and promised that the revised game would ever be put up for sale again.

That day finally arrived on Wednesday, when another online store called Good Old Games (GOG.com) – so named because it came as a platform for selling older computer games upgraded to run on modern computers – announced that it will list Devotion for sale by the end of the week.

Red Candle Games celebrated the return of its game on Twitter, thanking fans for “trust and support.”

Within hours, GOG overturned his decision and overturned it Devotion.

“After receiving many messages from players, we decided not to list the game in our store,” said the retailer he explained.

The announcement sparked significant mockery and mockery on Twitter, including from one of the game’s most prominent developers: Notch, the developer responsible for the hit game Minecraft.

“This is a sudden (and confusing) decision. Who are these mysterious “players” and what exactly did they say that challenged GOG to shoot the game? ” PC Gamer he asked me on Wednesday, mourning the surprising reversal of “a symbolic victory over a censored, low-minded internet bullet.”

Of course, most Internet mobsters do not have the muscles of a thin, thin-skinned global fascist superpower behind them. As noted by PC Gamer, the business license for the company that would be published Devotion in China, after the initial release, it was revoked and even the Taiwanese publisher of the game “quietly gave up” the title. At least Harvard University has taken steps to preserve the game so that it cannot be completely wiped out of history by the Chinese Communist Party.

Red Candle Games has released a statement on Thursday saying it is “unfortunate, but a winner to understand and abide by the GOG decision.”

“For players who are looking forward to it dedication relaunch, please accept the most sincere apologies. This is a difficult situation to overcome, but we will not stop striving “, said the studio.

GOG is owned by the game developer CD Project Red, a Polish studio best known for video games based on The Wizard, a series of fantasy books that has also been adapted into a popular series by streaming giant Netflix. At the time of writing, the company has not responded to media requests for comment Devotion.

Ironically, GOG was recent attacked of the usual hysterical crowd on the Internet because he is supposed to have adopted a hashtag loved by trans activists for a rude commercial promotion. The offensive tweet read: “Classic computer games #WontBeErased on our watch.” But apparently classic games Vol be wiped off the clock, if China says so.

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