Delisted nearly one year ago today, Devotion from Red Candle Games was taken offline after an incriminating poster was found in the title depicting China’s President Xi Jinping as “Winnie-the-Pooh moron”. While the game has yet to return to sale there will soon be at least one place where you can play it: at Harvard. The developer announced that both Devotion and Detention have been added to the Harvard-Yenching Library’s collection in a statement posted to Facebook on February 21st:
“This February, the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University officially added both of our titles ‘返校 Detention’ and ‘還願 Devotion’ to its collection. It is an incredible honour which belongs to not only Red Candle but also our supporters/players worldwide. Special thank to the invitation from Harvard-Yenching Library and the assistance from James Cheng, Prof. David Der-wei Wang, Xiao-he Ma, and Yedong Chen for making it possible.
Harvard-Yenching Library, formally founded in 1928, is known as the largest Eastern Asian library maintained by any American university. As game designers, never have we thought that our works could one day be added to its prestige collection. While we truly appreciate the recognition, we had also taken this opportunity to rethink the possibilities that our games could achieve.
For the past one year, we are sorry for making our community worried. Although the current status might not be ideal, we are still here and that nothing has changed – we are and will always develop games with the same passion.
Last but not the least, we’d like to express our gratitude toward our partners, friends and families, especially a big thank you to all fans who still believe in Red Candle Games. It’s a tough year for many of us, but we will keep going, and hopefully in the future we could share more works with you all.”
Devotion has yet to be listed among the library’s vast offerings but Detention (which is still available to buy on Steam, Switch, PlayStation 4, and mobile) can be played from a single display in a single room on the library grounds. Hopefully Devotion will soon be at its side making for a unique delisted road trip opportunity.