Devotion, a horror game developed by a Taiwan-based development studio RedCandleGames for the PC, has been blocked in mainland China over the game purportedly containing insults towards Xi Jinping, President of China.
As it turns out, the Devotion had snuck in an Easter egg where players could stumble upon a talisman which contains a direct insult at Xi Jinping. The talisman contains characters in Hakka which when translated, roughly means “Xi Winnie the Pooh Moron.”
Seems like something fairly tongue in cheek for us outsiders, but gamers from China are not taking this lightly. Head over to Steam and you will see the game being review-bombed. Devotion is no longer available for purchase in China as you might expect. A boycott campaign has also been initiated by upset netizens over at Weibo.
In any case, the developer has issued an apology on Facebook and have removed said insults from the game. Indevient, the publisher for the game in mainland China, also came out to state that it has ended its relationship with RedCandleGames.
Here is the apology letter from the developer (in Traditional Chinese):
Source: What’s On Weibo