Taiwanese horror game, Devotion, removed from Steam China due "insulting" Chinese President Xi and censored throughout China

[BananaInSandals]

Source: 

Apple Daily HK (in Chinese)

Spieltimes (in English, details about the insults)

Mirror Media (in Chinese, with details about devs possibly being sued by investors)

EDIT: INSIDE (Division's global sales is increasing rapidly after the incident)

 

Quote from Spiltimes:

Quote

The red seal in the centre of the poster reads “Xi Jinping” on the right, and “Winnie the Pooh” on the left. The four corners of the Fulu talisman reads “Your (mom moron)” in Taiwanese dialect.

In a newspaper segment found in another part of the game, one of the headlines say “Baozi(a Chinese dumpling, which is also used as a term to mock President Xi Jinping) has been sentenced to prison” and that he has been given “capital punishment.”

(I've only quoted two of them which I'm fairly confident it's actually directed to Xi Jinping. The third one is quite a stretched imo)

 

Quote from Apple Daily HK:

Quote

《還願》目前銷量約7.5萬套，在大陸地區暫賣出9,000套。近日，因遊戲中一張寫有「小熊維尼習近平」的符咒，惹起兩岸玩家罵戰，風波不斷發酵，Steam大陸區現已將《還願》遊戲下架。

"Devotion" has sold around 75 thousand copies with the mainland (People's Republic of China) consist of 9 thousands of them. Recently, due to an in-game poster with "Winnie the Pooh Xi Jinping" charm, caused war of words between mainland and Taiwanese players. The crisis has been worsening. Steam China has removed Devotion.

製作團隊赤燭遊戲立即在粉絲專頁發文道歉，表示製作遊戲時「會參照當時的網路用語作為暫時素材」，但這次因為版本同步問題沒有全部刪除，實屬意外，沒有任何攻擊或辱罵意圖

The developers, Red Candle Studios, has immediately apologized on their fan page. They said that, when developing games, they would "reference to the internet terminology/idioms and use them as temporary materials". But due to version synchronization problem, not all of them were removed. It is an accident without any intention to attack or insult.

赤燭遊戲微博被禁止評論，在中國網站B站(bilibili)更被全面河蟹，原先是該網站上面最熱門、討論度最高的遊戲，實況主播開台吸引破百萬人次觀看，但現在搜尋《還願》卻連任何訊息都再也找不到

Red Candle Studios' Weibo account now prohibits comments. Bilibili completely prohibits the talk of the game. It was originally the hottest and most discussed topic on the site with millions watching its stream. But now there are no messages when searching "Devotion".

中國代理《還願》的發行商indievent立刻發出中止合作公告... ...同時也宣佈終止與赤燭遊戲的合作關係。

Devotion's Chinese publisher, indivent, has immediately issue a termination of cooperation announcement... ...and also announcing that they will terminate any further cooperation relationship with Red Candle Studios.

 

Quote from Mirror Media:

Quote

最新消息是負責《還願》中國之外遊戲發行的唯晶科技也在微博貼出聲明，不但要終止與赤燭的合作，同時還會進行求償。

The latest news is that Devotion's publisher outside of China, Winking Entertainment, has posted on Weibo. They are not only ending the cooperation with Red Candle Studios, but also seeking compensation.

 

Personal thought:

Another day, another news about Taiwanese being screwed by PRC. Not gonna lie but those devs are definitely dumb not to remove this crap before publishing. Heck, just don't put this crop in in the first place if you aren't sure you can remove them all. But the PRC reaction, along with the publishers and investors, are way over imo. There's no need to completely censor the game. Just let the game die (or flourish lol) according to the public opinion. Oh. Who am I kidding? Of cause they won't let the public even think about it. 

 

Here's a picture of Emperor Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh because why not?

 

EDIT: News from INSIDE

Quote

在中國遭封殺的同時另一方面，可看到在銷售上的反應卻是逆勢上漲中，從steamspy 觀察，《還願》從昨日7萬5千套突破全球銷售10萬套到20萬套，看起來被中國抵制似乎反而成為更強大的宣傳效果。

At the same time as being censored by China, on the other hand, the sales volume is increasing rapidly. From steamspy's observation, Devotion has increased over 100k sales to 200k copies sold in total from yesterday's 75k. It seems that Chinese boycott has become an even stronger promotional effect.

Lmao. I'm sure people sitting in the office of butthurt and censorship in Beijing must be shitting their pants. Emperor Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh won't be happy about this.  

[Thaldor]

Oh, look at that, the classical case of getting Chinese go from 0 to 100 in one word: Taiwan.

 

Aa...aand bought. Just because frak People's republic of China.

[Haaselh0ff]

Is there anything China doesn't get offended by? Didn't they just review bot Dota 2 because a pro player said something like "good luck ching chongs" to a Chinese team?

Do they not realize how stupid they look when they get offended at the drop of a dime to little shit. Imagine if Trump got offended every time he saw a meme game about him.

[Bananasplit_00]

A Chinese dumpling is my new favourite insult to Winnie the Poh

[suicidalfranco]

TAIWAN NUMBA ONE

[Syntaxvgm]

Comparing Poo to Xi Jinping is wrong. Poo isn't responsible for murder.

Tigger never got dragged away for making a bad tweet. 

[grimreeper132]

15 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

Comparing Poo to Xi Jinping is wrong. Poo isn't responsible for murder.

Tigger never got dragged away for making a bad tweet. 

You are just assuming that, you don't know what happens when the cameras are off, poor Eeyore gets beaten daily for the simplest of things like looking at Whinne in the incorrect way, or having an opinion. 

[Tech_Dreamer]

what'd you expect would happen when you put shit like that there?

[Techstorm970]

47 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

TAIWAN NUMBA ONE

TAIWAN NUMBA WAN (FTFY)

 

Also, The WAN Show starring Linus Sebastian from LinusTaiTips!  

[Andreas Lilja]

That's what scares me about a Chinese coloration owning a large part of Epic Games Store, or any other store.

[Techstorm970]

6 minutes ago, Raskolnikov said:

a Chinese coloration owning a large part of Epic Games Store

The Epic Games Store doesn't look very Chinese to me.

[Andreas Lilja]

9 minutes ago, Techstorm970 said:

The Epic Games Store doesn't look very Chinese to me.

Man I have no idea why I wrote that instead of corporation, boss isn't even near. 

[Brooksie359]

12 hours ago, Haaselh0ff said:

Is there anything China doesn't get offended by? Didn't they just review bot Dota 2 because a pro player said something like "good luck ching chongs" to a Chinese team?

Do they not realize how stupid they look when they get offended at the drop of a dime to little shit. Imagine if Trump got offended every time he saw a meme game about him.

Well in the US it is completely legal to make fun of the president and is actually unheard of if nobody does. In China it's a whole different story with people going to jail because of "reasons" after criticizing the leader of China. 

[Trik'Stari]

12 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Oh, look at that, the classical case of getting Chinese go from 0 to 100 in one word: Taiwan.

 

Aa...aand bought. Just because frak People's republic of China.

Same.

 

Screw that "government".

[mr moose]

Not defending it, it's pretty fucking lame, but sometimes its important to remember that the Chinese government is in control of one third the worlds population and half of them are bordering on 3rd world impoverished.  Their culture is vastly different to much of the 1st world,  so much that one small destabilization and it could easily all end in chaos (for us as well).

 

 

 

 

[williamcll]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Not defending it, it's pretty fucking lame, but sometimes its important to remember that the Chinese government is in control of one third the worlds population and half of them are bordering on 3rd world impoverished.  Their culture is vastly different to much of the 1st world,  so much that one small destabilization and it could easily all end in chaos (for us as well).

 

 

 

 

Really doesn't seem like half the population is poor at all considering Chinese tourists everywhere. 

[Humbug]

When they say the game was eventually removed by steam china does that mean that it's perfect world doing all this administration rather than Valve?

 

Also is this stuff illegal in China? Or is it a case of them being afraid to offend?

[Humbug]

16 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Really doesn't seem like half the population is poor at all considering Chinese tourists everywhere. 

I don't know but when you have a billion people it's perfectly plausible. There's a big gap between the urban and rural in china.

[mr moose]

45 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Really doesn't seem like half the population is poor at all considering Chinese tourists everywhere. 

That's the other half,  China is also one of the fastest producers of millionaires (who incidentally want to leave), but when you have so many living at the opposite end of the spectrum is when you have the greatest social unrest. 

 

 

[Gullerback]

10 hours ago, williamcll said:

Really doesn't seem like half the population is poor at all considering Chinese tourists everywhere. 

Homelessness is a pretty gigantic issue in china.  It gets buried in the press if it even makes it there much like everything else negative 

[NeuesTestament]

10 hours ago, Humbug said:

Also is this stuff illegal in China? Or is it a case of them being afraid to offend?

Legal or illegal are rather relative terms in China.

[Billy Pilgrim]

On 2/23/2019 at 10:31 AM, Haaselh0ff said:

Is there anything China doesn't get offended by? Didn't they just review bot Dota 2 because a pro player said something like "good luck ching chongs" to a Chinese team?

Do they not realize how stupid they look when they get offended at the drop of a dime to little shit. Imagine if Trump got offended every time he saw a meme game about him.

Its not about them getting offended. It about keeping a carefully curated image of them to their citizens.

[Techstorm970]

On 2/23/2019 at 7:05 AM, BananaInSandals said:

Taiwanese horror game, Devotion, removed from Steam China due "insulting" Chinese President Xi and censored throughout China

And...?

 

Taiwan and China have hated each other since they split apart.  #NotSurprising

[Mister Woof]

Unrelated, but I love Taiwanese romance dramas.

[Sharp_3yE]

I'm SOOO glade I live in USA and not some place where the Government could ruin me as easily. Not that USA government can't hurt people here but it's harder for them to do so.