CD Projekt blocks controversial horror game Devotion’s release on GOG ‘after messages from gamers’

CD Projekt has cancelled plans to release controversial horror game Devotion on GOG, just hours after it was announced that the title would be made available on the digital distribution platform.

Publisher and developer Red Candle Games said earlier on Wednesday that the game would be released on GOG on December 18, but its launch has since been blocked by the platform owner.

“After receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store,” reads a message published on GOG’s Twitter account.

Set in a 1980s Taiwan apartment block, Devotion is a critically acclaimed first-person horror game inspired by East Asian folklore.

The title was originally released on Steam in February 2019 but was delisted a week later after players uncovered an in-game poster comparing Chinese president Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh.

As reported by the BBC, Winnie the Pooh has been censored on Chinese search engines and social media since 2017 to block Xi being compared to the popular children’s story character.

Red Candle Games said at the time that the offending material was present in the game by accident due to a technical issue.

“The whole team of Red Candle Games bears the responsibility of this awfully unprofessional mistake,” it said in a statement. “It is not Red Candle’s vision to secretly project extensive ideology, nor is it to attack any person in the real world.”

A physical version of Devotion was released in Taiwan earlier this year, but it never received an English release.