Devotion, the outstanding Taiwanese horror game which was removed from Steam after being attacked by Chinese censors, has now been preserved at Harvard University. The game launched on the platform just one year ago, but was only available for a single week before a firestorm of controversy brought it down.
Devotion was developed by Red Candle Games, the fan-favorite Taiwanese independent game development studio that was also responsible for the excellent Detention. Devotion is set in 1980's Taiwan, centering on a beleaguered screenwriter and father who ventures through his increasingly warped apartment while reckoning with his own mistreatment of his family. Despite the story itself having nothing to do with China or its politics, Chinese players discovered art assets in the game that compared president Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh, a meme that is roundly banned in China. This set off a furious campaign of abuse and review-bombing from censors and bad-faith actors, which resulted in the game being de-listed from Steam and its publisher losing its Chinese business license.
While the popular horror game Devotion did not (and apparently will not) return to the platform, Red Candle Games has announced on Facebook that the game has been added to the Harvard-Yenching library at Harvard University. The library, founded in 1928, is the largest Eastern Asian library maintained by any American university. "It is an incredible honour which belongs to not only Red Candle but also our supporters/players worldwide," the studio said in the post. "As game designers, never have we thought that our works could one day be added to its [prestigious] collection. While we truly appreciate the recognition, we [have] also taken this opportunity to rethink the possibilities that our games [can] achieve."
Red Candle's first game, Detention, will also be preserved at Harvard alongside Devotion. Detention is still available for purchase on multiple platforms, but the Harvard-Yenching library is now the only place where one can legally play Devotion (unless they bought the extremely limited Steam version). Red Candle apologized in the post for "making our community worried" over the past year, but also emphasized that "we are still here and nothing has changed - we are and will always develop games with the same passion."
The saga of Devotion is one of the most egregious examples of censorship in today's video game industry. It's also a sadly unknown story - when the game first came under fire, most gamers were more concerned with perceived censorship in the Final Fantasy 7 remake. Still, this move to preserve Red Candle's works is a significant gesture and thankfully prevents these important games from being lost to history once they vanish from a storefront like Steam.
Source: Red Candle Games/Facebook
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