News Chinese publisher Indievent (Devotion) lose their business license

[Aelphaeis Mangarae]

The tragic tale of Red Candle’s horror game Devotion only gets sadder. Originally pulled from stores after it was discovered to contain a joking comparison between Winnie The Pooh and Chinese president (and Winnie The Pooh lookalike) Xi Jinping. Now it appears it has cost its Chinese publisher everything. As shared via Twitter by Iain Garner of Another Indie and confirmed by PCGamesN, the Chinese government has revoked the business license of the game’s Chinese publisher Indievent. While Devotion isn’t explicitly mentioned, it is stated that Indievent broke “relevant” laws.

If this is the Chinese government reacting to Devotion, then it’s a very delayed effect, but plausible nonetheless. As The Guardian point out, Indievent distanced themselves from developers Red Candle shortly after the offending image (a rough note in the game) was discovered. Despite pulling it from sale and issuing an apology, Red Candle’s earlier game, Detention, was also hit by a deluge of negative and often abusive reviews. While many appear to be angry about Pooh, some appear to be angry at the studio for endangering the precarious position of Taiwan’s games industry. While legally independent, Taiwanese studios often rely on Chinese business, and a government crackdown could close off that market.

Chinese publisher Indievent lose their business license after Devotion pooh furore

To clarify something the article brushes over in favor of Pooh Bear, Chinese anger at Devotion went quite a bit deeper than Winnie the Pooh digs. Devotion has a great deal of subtext and symbolism that directly touches upon China and Taiwan. Once the Pooh thing triggered Chinese nationalists to look more closely at the game, they saw the game's core themes as a direct attack on mainlanders and the Chinese goverment in general, and as you might imagine they didn't take this particularly well

The fear of upsetting China has had a paralysing effect on the games industry at large, with companies like Ubisoft rapidly backpedaling on anything that seems even vaguely critical of dystopian governments, such as Watch Dogs 3's marketing. IMO, there's a reason you haven't seen any publishers step into the mess and offer to publish Devotion themselves. Pissing off the Chinese government is too much of a risk.

It is unclear if or when Devotion will ever return to Steam. Currently the only way to acquire the game is through piracy. One of the tragedies of this situation is that the developers ended up screwing over the Chinese publisher who acted in good faith. The publisher had no idea the game contained such themes, and they were caught in the crossfire between the developers and the government.