You may remember last year that the game Devotion was released, a Taiwanese horror game that was suddenly and mysteriously removed from Steam after it was discovered that one of the developers had secretly put in an easter egg making fun of China’s president, Xi Jinping, by comparing him to Winnie the Pooh. This not only caused the developers to be bombarded by pro-chinese protestors but their publishing company had their business license revoked and other companies involved in the project quietly backed out, scary stuff.
Well it now gets even weirder as the game was announced to be released on GOG, CD Projekt Red’s digital distribution platform. However shortly after this was announced the game suddenly dissapeared again with no explanation. Shortly afterwards however GOG staff put out a tweet stating that due to being contacted by ‘gamers’ that they decided not to list the game on their store and that was the end of that. I wonder who these mysterious ‘gamers’ were and I wonder if they sounded a lot like Chinese secret police, but regardless this sets a dangerous and worrying trend if even despite the game being censored and having the playful reference removed something like this could instill such fear in publishers and store owners alike. I guess it makes it one of the scariest horror games though, and all because of a Winnie the Pooh image, what a world we live in. Cyberpunk may not be that too far off after all.
That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.