On December 16, 2020, Red Candle Games said Devotion, a PC horror game removed from Steam during a QA check after backlash about its content, would finally appear on CD Projekt’s digital storefront GOG. However, about five hours after the announcement appeared, the company’s Twitter account announced it had canceled the release.
Here is GOG’s statement. It claimed it received “many messages from gamers.” Prior to CD Projekt’s statement, there actually was a Devotion GOG listing. Red Candle Games shared it in its announcement, confirmed it would cost $16.99/€13.99, and said it would be identical to the original game.
Earlier today, it was announced that the game Devotion is coming to GOG. After receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store.
— GOG.COM (@GOGcom) December 16, 2020
All Devotion PC copies were initially available via Steam, before it was delisted the same month it was released. It did eventually get a physical rerelease in Taiwan in June 2020.
As a reminder, GOG is owned by CD Projekt. (CD Projekt Red is the company’s developer.) The company experienced quite a few issues lately. For example, it held a December 14, 2020 Management Board conference call following the negative reception to Cyberpunk 2077 console versions, which released with many bugs and issues. As GameIndustry.biz reported, the company’s stock also dropped 29% on December 11, 2020.
During the conference call, Joint-CEO Adam Kicinski made the following statement:
After three delays, we as the Management Board were too focused on releasing the game. We underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues, we ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles. It was the wrong approach and against our business philosophy. On top of that, during the campaign, we showed the game mostly on PCs.
Devotion originally appeared on PCs in February 2019.
