The Taiwanese horror game Devotion was released in 2019 and was immediately pulled from sale following a controversy involving Chinese President Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh (long story). It was available for purchase again a few years later, but it was promised to be released on GOG in late 2020, so it should have been a little sooner. However, on the same day the revival was announced, GOG issued a statement saying it would not be released after all. Six months later, managing director Maciej Gołeogon;biewski has reflected on his decision not to put the horse up for sale, after also putting the controversial sale on hold.
“It’s still difficult to look back on that situation,” Gołeogon;biewski said in an interview with Eurogamer. “At the time, we made this decision against a backdrop of very real business constraints, limited understanding of complex geopolitical factors, and a lack of good options that would protect GOG and our partners and allow us to release the game responsibly. In hindsight, we realize that this decision, and the way it was communicated, understandably eroded the trust of our users.”
Gołębiewski continued, “Keeping a global digital storefront operating requires navigating legal, operational, and commercial realities that don’t always yield ideal outcomes. In 2020, we chose the path we believed was best for GOG, even if it meant sacrificing credibility.”
We feel the situation is different when it comes to games like Horses, which was banned from sale on Steam due to outdated scenes, stating that selling it on GOG “posed no legal, political, or operational risk to our business or our partners. There were no other concerns that drove this decision, just a simple evaluation of the game itself.”
I have to say I’m not completely convinced by his reasoning. At the time, GOG explained that it was discontinuing sales of Devotion, saying, “After receiving numerous messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game on our store.” Of course, this may have been the official reason offered at the time, and Gołębiewski is now telling the true story of events, but it’s a little hard to believe that they didn’t take into account the underlying business and geopolitical factors up to that point (the game was almost two years old at this point). Still, I think it’s better to have at least one storefront that actively releases games with difficult themes than none at all.
