Devotion horror game from Steam after the Winnie-the-Pooh controversy

Over the weekend, the developer Red Candle Games found itself at the center of the controversy after the players discovered disparaging remarks about China's President Xi Jinping in the horror game recently released on Sunday. studio, Devotion. Now, after an intense criticism of the game by Chinese players, Devotion has been completely removed from Steam.

Red Candle, based in Taiwan, called the inclusion of a poster that made fun of the Chinese president "purely an accident" and apologized for the inclusion of a work of art translated into "Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh". Chinese censors have raged on social media that is comparing the president to the bear.

In a third statement released today on Steam, the studio said: "The entire Red Candle Games team bears the blame for this extremely unprofessional mistake. Red Candle's vision is not to secretly project an extended ideology, nor to attack anyone in the real world. "

Red Candle added, "We sincerely hope that everyone can stay calm and get back to the main message of the game, which can be obtained through the game experience of Devotion. "

It will be difficult at this stage because Devotion is no longer available on Steam. In a statement posted on Steam, the developer stated that it had removed the title of the sale to review the content of the game:

Due to technical problems that cause unexpected accidents and among other reasons, we shoot Devotion off steam store to have another comprehensive check of quality assurance. At the same time, we would like to take this opportunity to mitigate the increased pressure in our community following our previous artistic incident, and our team was also reviewing our gaming equipment to ensure that no other unexpected equipment was inserted. Hopefully this would help the whole audience to focus on the game itself on his return.

Red Candle has also apparently removed or deprived all official trailers for Devotion on Youtube. A playlist previously containing three videos for the game is no longer available.

Negative answer to Devotion reported to the other horror game of Red Candle on Steam, Detention, which has been bombarded with negative reviews in recent days.

Update (February 25, 6 pm ET): This story has been updated to include a statement by Red Candle Games explaining why Devotion was fired from Steam.