Devotion, a Tiawanese horror game, has been banned for containing a hidden message insulting Xi Jinping, the Chinese dictator. 

Produced by independent Taiwanese developer Red Candle Games, the game guides players through a 1980s Tiawanese apartment. Eagle eyed players noticed something very obscure in one of the rooms: art on the wall said in Chinese writing, “Xi Jinping Little Bear Winnie.”

China doesn’t take references to Winnie the Pooh lightly. Chinese social media users often compared pictures of Xi to the appearance of the chubby bear, causing China in 2017 to ban Pooh movies and all media mentioning the cartoon character.  

Overreact much?

Devotion amassed a sizable fanbase on release, until the hidden message was uncovered by Chinese players. After receiving significant backlash, the company released a statement apologizing for the “accident,” claiming the art was just a “placeholder” which should have been deleted. 

Two days later, the game was removed from its online store. 

This alone caused the game to be banned in China in 2019, and its Chinese publisher lost its business license for ‘endangering national safety’, according to DailyMail. 

Much to the fans’ delight, it seemed like the game would be given a second chance.  Their joy was short lived.

Last Wednesday, Red Candle Games announced the game would be rereleased on December 18th over a Polish digital platform named GOG.com. 

It only took 5 hours for GOG to change their minds. “Earlier today, it was announced that the game Devotion is coming to GOG. After receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store,” the company tweeted. 

GOG is just the latest example of a company being too cowardly to stand up against the Xi. They should have just said, “After realizing we may lose Chinese business, we have decided not to list the game in our store.”

I’m not sure what Xi’s problem with being compared to Pooh is. Maybe it’s because he is chubby, or maybe it’s because Pooh cares too much about other people. My money’s on the latter. 

If a new movie came out named “Pooh Bear Forces Muslims into Concentration Camps,” then I bet Xi would be thrilled with the comparison. 

Knowing Disney’s capitulation to China, this might be a planned blockbuster.

Hat Tip: DailyMail

Image Credit: Pixy.org and Wikimedia

 

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.