Taiwan-based Red Candle Games, previously well-known and hugely commended for Detention, released another horror tale, this time in a first-person perspective–Devotion, which spurred controversy within its first week. The developers had to apologise, remove the controversial artwork and pull Devotion from Steam entirely.

Not just the game, but people from both Taiwan and China were in conflict regarding the issue. You can read more about the controversy in our detailed report. I’ve been constantly ringing Red Candle Games almost every single day. Alas, silence prevailed. Following their public apology, Red Candle Games went completely low profile, avoiding almost every call and email we sent them throughout the past two months. However, on 18th of this month, Red Candle picked up the phone and it was a familiar voice. Tiff Liu, the PR Director at the company with whom I’ve had conversations in the past.

“I’m really sorry to hear everything that happened,” I opened. “So, are you back to work or something? Because you haven’t been picking up calls for a very long time.”

“Well, at the moment we’re working on…” Tiff paused for a moment. “We’re still adjusting the incident but because we’re still in progress, I’m afraid we can’t say anything to the public right now.”

For reconfirmation, I asked her if Red Candle is currently in the problem-fixing stage, to which, she replied, “I’m afraid we can’t say anything now. As I said before, we’re still progressing with the incident and then because there’s some kinda like.. we’re still working on it. But because we’re uncertain, we can’t release anything to the public or to anyone now. So, everything is just within our company. I’m sorry about that. Hopefully, you understand that.”

Devotion was initially published by publishers Indievent and Winking Skywalker, both of which are from China. However, following the outbreak, both of their names were delisted from the game’s Steam page and were replaced with Red Candle Games. But, “Did the publishers actually back off?”

“We can’t respond,” Tiff denied an answer. “At the moment we’re at a very inconvenient status of saying anything. Everything we wanted to say to the public is already in the announcement. That’s the only thing we can release for now.”

Finally, I assured her I won’t trouble her anymore and hung up the phone call after one last question. “When are you planning to republish the game?”

“We’re in the progress of doing our best to address a re-release but we’re uncertain and we’ve been working on it. But for any future progress, we’re going to release on our Facebook.”

I told her to keep me updated about the game via email and in return, I’ll be keeping you updated with the advancements if any.

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