In a tweet, the Taiwanese developer released a short clip of what looks like a 2D action game. It’s a work in progress, of course. Red Candle is best known for the superb horror game Devotion, which recently returned to sale digitally two years after it was delisted on Steam. Devotion is considered one of the finest horror games of the past decade, but it has proved controversial. Following its release in the spring of 2019, Devotion was found to contain an unflattering reference to China’s president, Xi Jinping. The discovery sparked an outcry among Chinese players, leading to the withdrawal of Chinese distributors, the closure of Red Candle’s account on Weibo, one of China’s largest social media platforms, and the removal of the game from Steam in China. Red Candle apologised at length for what it said was a placeholder asset, accidentally transferred to the final release. These comments were not enough to stem the backlash, however, and a week after sale, the developer pulled the game from Steam in all territories to perform unspecified fixes. It never returned. In December 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 company CD Projekt came under fire for reversing its decision to release Devotion on digital shop GOG.com. Red Candle had tweeted to announce its game would come out on GOG on 18th December, with a link to a store page that was subsequently pulled. Red Candle later issued a statement in response, saying: “we are willing to understand and respect GOG’s decision. This is a difficult predicament to overcome, but we won’t stop striving.” For more, be sure to check out Edwin’s wonderful making of Devotion feature.
