A Taiwan-developed horror computer game being boycotted by Chinese netizens over an image mocking Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was removed from global digital distribution platform Steam on Tuesday, just seven days after its release.
The game’s Taiwanese developer, Red Candle Games, said on Facebook that it pulled Devotion (還願) from Steam because of technical problems and alluded to the boycott caused by the artwork that angered Chinese users.
“Due to technical issues that cause unexpected crashes and among other reasons, we are pulling Devotion off from steam store to have another complete QA [quality assurance] check,” the company said in an English-language statement.
Photo: Lo Tzu-hsin, Taipei Times
“At the same time we’d like to take this opportunity to ease the heightened pressure in our community resulted from our previous Art Material Incident,” Red Candle Games said. “Our team would also review our game material once again making sure no other unintended materials was inserted in.”
“Hopefully this would help all audience to focus on the game itself again upon its return,” it said.
The horror puzzle game was released on Tuesday last week, but soon faced a boycott by Chinese users, creating a controversy that has been played up in local media.
Vice Premier Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) defended the game and criticized China’s censorship and control over the media.
“Only in countries with democracy and freedom can creation be free from restrictions,” Chen said.
A screenshot on a Chinese microblogging site of a charm amulet hanging on the wall of a room in the game angered Chinese netizens after it was noticed that the names of Xi and Winnie-the-Pooh were written on the amulet in red.
The reference was unrelated to any aspect of the game.
Winnie-the-Pooh has been used to mock Xi since a picture of the Chinese leader walking with then-US president Barack Obama in 2013 spurred comparisons to Winnie-the-Pooh walking with Tigger.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not