Due to technical issues that cause unexpected crashes and among other reasons, we are pulling Devotion off from steam store to have another complete QA check. At the same time we'd like to take this opportunity to ease the heightened pressure in our community resulted from our previous Art Material Incident, our team would also review our game material once again making sure no other unintended materials was inserted in. Hopefully this would help all audience to focus on the game itself again upon its return.
Developer statements: 1, 2 (and 3: removal above, but un-linkable). So, if a couple of game textures vaguely ridiculing a president and taking a stance in a social debate equals "the internets on fire, your publishers dumping you, an explosion of negative reviews, hate messages littering your game page, talks of Steam being potentially banned from the country", I say 👏 pretty amazing yield, Red Candle, you touched a nerve. There's lots to unpack here and most of it is in Chinese, which I cannot read. Hoping for more coverage soon, in the meantime here's a summary from a forum user, edited by me for grammar:
> This incident may give the Chinese government a perfect excuse to block Steam in China, or to force Steam to pull off all Red Candles Game from the store. Summary:
>
> - At first, the game becomes extremely popular in the gaming channels in Chinese community. Streamers stream the game, millions of viewers watch the game playthrough. Game also receives universal praise from the media, it even becomes a trending topic in Chinese social media. The public gives extremely positive feedback.
> - Then, users from Taiwan PTT and gaming forums post inflammatory screenshots and mock that the game successfully fooled Chinese mainlanders into supporting a game to "mock PRC people and KMT supporters" (who tend to unify with China). It attracts more attention and people dig deeper into the game. Anger transfers to outrage when people discover on the founder / lead designer's social media that he supports Taiwan independence and writes political posts.
> - Except for the photos of Xi, the developers also placed other elements condemning the RPC and mainlander Chinese. Text and images from the game imply that cult in the game is 陆心会 (mainland heart association), which means the association of people are in favor of PRC. The cult leader's name is 陆恭铭/陆公民 ，which means "PRC citizens" in Chinese. The Cult Festival in the game is October 1st to 7th, which is the Nation Festival of PRC. The list goes on. As more hidden messages are discovered, mainlanders start feeling irritated and cheated on.
