Horror Devotion removed from Steam - cause again Winnie the Pooh, Xi Jinping and the wrath of China on political overtones

February 19, Steam released Taiwan Horror Devotion - a family drama mixed with local mythology and religious cultism. This is a game in the spirit of “walking simulators”, where the main mechanic is a slow and attentive study of the world from the first person and without much action. In Devotion, the world is an empty apartment building in Taiwan, in the 1980s, where the main character wanders through time loops, watching for a constant change of environment.

Immediately after the release, Devotion became a hit on Twitch, hit the top of sales, instantly gained 95% positive feedback on Steam and collected a very good press.
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A week later, the game was removed from the store, all its discussions were banned in Chinese gaming forums, and the authors removed all videos about it from the Youtube channel. Despite this, the scandal still roars around the game, which began with ridiculous memes, went into national and political conflicts and now may threaten Valve's plans in China.

On February 21, players noticed in the game a poster, the so-called “ Fulu ”, a written version of an amulet in Asian religions, which is used, among other things, to expel evil spirits. Chinese players read the inscription "Xi Jinping, Winnie the Pooh, moron." Even if the poster did not have the last word, in China this is enough to ban the game.

The similarity of the PRC Chairman with the Disney Bear has long been a meme, to which power is very sensitive. If in search of the Chinese Weibo twitter to drive in "Winnie the Pooh", he will issue result "content out of the law". Messenger WeChat blocks pictures and gifs with the character. Last year, China even refused to rent the movie "Christopher Robin".

However, in the first place the game caused not the reaction of the authorities, but the anger of the players. On the Devotion page on Steam fell bad reviews and complaints of insults. Players began to search for more messages in the game - and find them. Some were frankly sucked from the finger, some were fakes, but the negative excitement grew exponentially.

For example, players found in the game a newspaper with the text "Baozi was arrested and sentenced to death for assaulting a student." Baozi is a Chinese dish, a pie, but as it turned out, it is also another nickname of Xi Jinping. In the end, the players blamed the authors for calling the chairman a pedophile.

By that time, the game had already drowned in negative reviews, mainly from Chinese players, and all its discussions on Chinese forums were blocked. Some users not from China, not understanding why they react to jokes about Jinping like that, began to think that all these are bots and paid commentators. But anger had a second bottom.

The name of the main villain of the game, the religious cultist, is supposedly consonant with the Chinese words "Motherland" and "People." In the story, on October 1, he arranges a sacrifice, where one of the important characters dies at the age of 49. The players brought it all up with red threads on the wall and made a conclusion: October 1, 1949 - the day of independence of the PRC. This date is associated with the victory of the Communist Party in the civil war over the Kuomintang party. The losing leaders - and with them another 2 million citizens - fled to the island of Taiwan and separated from the PRC. The independence of the island is still one of the most pressing political issues in the region.

Now that the Taiwanese developer has left political easter eggs in the game, the Chinese players thought that they were imposing ideology and propagating calls for Taiwan’s independence.

On February 23, Red Candle Games, a horror developer studio, published a huge apology letter . According to them, during development, one of the employees simply took a picture from the Internet and set it as a stub. The rest of the developers were busy with their duties, and did not notice the inscriptions. As a result, the poster got into the release version by accident, by mistake.

Then three more paragraphs of apologies and assurances that there is no political statement or intention to offend anyone in the game. They wrote that the Chinese publisher was also not aware of the problem and had nothing to do with it. However, the contract has already been terminated, and money will be returned to everyone.

The update, which removed the scandalous poster, was released on the same day. But since many players in China downloaded pirated versions, the build with the words about Jinping continued to spread. On the same day, the game became unavailable on Steam in China.

On February 25, the game was removed from Steam completely, so all those who bought it had to return the money. Red Candle Games urged not to respond to speculation and follow only official posts, but the studio's channel on Weibo is now also blocked.

Like many IT companies, Valve values ​​the Chinese market, despite everything that happens there. The company is currently working on a localized version of Steam for the country in partnership with the local studio Perfect World, so that the service complies with the laws and realities of China. Can such a surge of negativity disrupt these plans? There will be nothing surprising.