Search KoopaTV!

Translate

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Steam and GOG (Valve and CD Projekt) Are Pawns of the Chinese Communist Party

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - So are many other members of the gaming industry, by the way.

There are two main ways that multinational corporations can display their weakness and lack of meaningful values: Manufacture their goods/source their supply chain from mainland China (where enslaved ethnic minorities produce the products), and sell their goods in mainland China, subject to the censorship demands from the Chinese Communist Party. Mixed in this is working directly with Chinese companies and perhaps being bought out by them.

The videogame industry is increasingly doing all of the above (to either reduce costs or increase revenues), and it's incredibly important for gamers to oppose this growing trend and try to reverse it. While some of your idiot politicians on Earth may be distracting you by making it seem like Russia is the planet's local boogeyperson, it's really China. Only China has the unique combination of expansionist goals, a murderous ideology that they want to spread, total disregard for human rights, and other nations actually bending over backwards to accommodate them because of their fast-growing economy (fueled by the innovations of other nations that the Chinese are stealing without consequence).

Which brings us to Devotion, the horror game made by Taiwanese game developer Red Candle Games, also known for horror game Detention (also on the Switch). I'm not into horror stuff, so I can't speak to the quality of the games, but people who do like the horror genre (like Samantha Lienhard, who reviewed Detention here) think those games are great.

But you won't be able to try Devotion right now, specifically, because it was removed from Valve's Steam platform back in early 2019 over a massive outcry from upset Chinese thugs over a reference to Chinese Communist Party authoritarian Xi Jinping. Take a look at an image we won't censor, even if a mob of Chinese communists swarms KoopaTV:


Devotion Red Candle Games Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh meme Chinese Communist Party
Screenshot taken from JediLato's YouTube video on the topic.
It apparently references Xi Jinping's resemblance to Winnie the Pooh, and there's a curse involved.


Well, if it was removed from Steam (and it's STILL removed from Steam), why not try other platforms? And that's what Red Candle Games just tried with GOG.com, maintained by Polish gaming group CD Projekt. It was announced today that it'd release on December 18, 2020:

Hours later, CD Projekt contradicted the developer's message with this tweet stating Devotion will not be available, citing “many messages from gamers”:

By the way, Red Candle removed the Xi Jinping reference from Devotion after the initial uproar from Steam, but the Chinese Communist Party doesn't care about that. And Valve and CD Projekt don't care either, with them whimpering before the swarm. This is particularly upsetting for CD Projekt, because they shouldn't be bending their knee towards the communists given the history of their country, Poland. But, hey, just like American companies are abandoning their nation's heritage of freedom, CD Projekt is abandoning the lessons that their nation was supposed to learn under the awfulness of communist rule. (Sort of like how they abandoned notions of quality assurance when they released Cyberpunk 2077.)

The proper reply should've been to ignore the crying minions of Xi Jinping. The less preferable but still okay alternative would be to region-lock Devoted so it's available everywhere except mainland China. Right now, the storefronts are preventing the rest of the world, including the supposedly liberty-loving parts of it, from being able to purchase and enjoy Devoted.

I'd suggest you should boycott them, but you might have to go and boycott the whole gaming industry for being in bed with the Chinese communists, and that's not a great idea. Instead, since GOG seems to take into consideration messages from many gamers, perhaps provide some messages of your own on how you feel about this.




KoopaTV is a big foe of the Chinese Communist Party, and the website provides a regular update in its monthly newsletter dedicated to determining whether or not they are currently banned from China. So far... nope.


Regarding Cyberpunk 2077: CD Projekt made materially false statements to investors throughout 2020 saying the game's bugs were under control. That's grounds for a lawsuit!
Want to see more Chinese Communist Party pawns? How about... John Cena?
KoopaTV finally made its own Winnie the Pooh meme to represent China!

10 comments :

  1. Real upset with CD Projekt. The gamers won the fight agaisnt the woke mob who said Cyberpunk was transphobic, and now they pull all this stuff on us? Not cool, not cool in the slightest.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As far as I'm concerned, the trans thing is a silly sideshow that's not worth discussing. Which is why I didn't.


      The stuff I just wrote about is actual serious stuff and should outweigh wotever you feel about the sideshow.

      Delete
    2. Well its no surprise to me that they bowed down to china, if they go any lower we'll be calling them Disney. I'm just upset that we all rooted for this game/company, and now we got this sick sort of karma. Seems like Xi Ping doesn't like a lot of things, what's his problem? Maybe a nice jar of honey will do the trick.

      Delete
    3. I recommend that people don't hero-worship any corporation, politician, or celebrity. Tends not to end well, be it Reggie Fils-Aime, CD Projekt, or certain competitive Super Smash Bros. players.

      Delete
  2. Is it even true that CD Projekt are also the ones who made the Witcher games? Because like, I tried Witcher 3 and what I played of it I thought was really good, just cumbersome to play with a keyboard. Seems like they've fallen a vast distance since then...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. CD Projekt Red is the developer of the Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077. They are the development studio of the larger company CD Projekt, which also owns GOG.

      Delete
  3. The most baffling thing to me is that GOG didn't anticipate what would happen. They must have known why Devotion was removed from Steam, so why even agree to sell it if they were going to reverse the decision after being pressured? It's not like they haven't sold controversial games before, even games that were banned from Steam!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a solid point.

      If GOG wanted to be pawns of the Chinese, why even initially accept this to begin with?

      The only explanation is that they must not have known the Chinese communists had an issue with this, and they're just really stupid pawns.

      Delete
  4. I just got banned from a community HUB on steam. Someone said to me some comment on chinese players and I said how I don't like the government there because of the genocide against the uighur population. 2 days later I get a message saying i'm banned for saying something political. Since when is opposing genocide political?!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, genocide is inherently a political action since it's committed by a political body... so opposing genocide IS political.

      Opposing genocide is also the right thing to do.

      Delete

We embrace your comments.
Expect a reply between 1 minute to 24 hours from your comment. We advise you to receive an e-mail notification for when we do reply.
Also, see our Disclaimers.

Spamming is bad, so don't spam. Spam includes random advertisements and obviously being a robot. Our vendor may subject you to CAPTCHAs.

If you comment on an article that is older than 60 days, you will have to wait for a staffer to approve your comment. It will get approved and replied to, don't worry. Unless you're a spambot.