Earlier today, it was announced that horror title Devotion would be seeing a re-release via GOG on December 18. The news was met with a lot of positive reception, as Devotion was infamously delisted from Steam in February 2019 and has otherwise been nearly impossible to get hold of since, with its physical release only being available in Taiwan.
However, in a rather shocking move, GOG has now stated via its official Twitter that it will no longer be listing Devotion on its store. Unsurprisingly, this sudden pivot has not gone down well and neither GOG or its owner, CD Projekt, has provided any solid reason as to why.
The Twitter announcement simply reads that GOG had received messages from gamers, implying that to be the reason behind the decision, but it doesn't explain what those messages were about or why people would want it to not be sold on GOG. Though many believe they already know the real reason why.
As stated earlier, Devotion was removed last year. This was because the game, developed by the Taiwan-based Red Candle Games, generated controversy for including a poster that mocked/criticized China's president, Xi Jinping. The poster read "Xi Jinping Winnie-the-Pooh moron," itself a reference to memes that compare Jinping to the Disney character and even led to Pooh Bear being completely banned in China.
So, it's believed that GOG has chosen to go back on its word for the same reason, with accusations of censorship and that it faced pressure from the Chinese government rather than regular people. IGN's Joe Skrebels even says that he checked the last 24 hours of Tweets sent to GOG and couldn't find a single mention or reference to Devotion.
What makes things worse is that CD Projekt has already been facing criticism throughout the last week following the release of Cyberpunk 2077. Though it performed extremely well financially, what was once one of the most anticipated games of the year has already had any legacy it may have soured thanks to the game being incredibly buggy, especially on the console versions.
CD Projekt even apologized for not showing how the game ran on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One before release and is offering full refunds, though that's now become an issue due to Sony refusing refunds for digital PS4 copies. Between these controversies, nearly all the goodwill that the company has managed to build over so many years has quickly been lost.
As for Red Candle Games, at the time of writing, it hasn't commented on the sudden reversal or if it will seek out other means of getting Devotion back on PC or at least available outside of Taiwan. Fortunately, the developer appears to be in a good position regardless, as it announced recently that it has a new project in the works.