Ok, I can understand the controversy regarding the term "oriental". However, the copy both on Steam and GOG uses it, so maybe it's not GOG's fault this time.

This I can agree with

Not really, tho. See attachment.

Far be it from me to read meaning into what might be a perfectly innocuous change to the game page copy, but for the sake of argument, let's do just that: gog - forever the mealy-mouthed weak-kneed yellow bellies - were perfectly aware that advertising this as a Chinese game would not go over well with a large part of their user base. So they deliberately changed that part of the description to obscure the game's origin in an effort to not have Winnie-memes pop up in the release thread 2 posts in. Which, miraculously, seems to have worked so far.

Which brings me to a whole 'nother can of worms I have with this release. It's almost as if somebody at gog said: "Welp, we sure screwed up that Devotion/Detention release last year, so that's no longer an option! So let's just give our users the next best thing: A Mainland Chinese-made paint-by-numbers Detention copycat. The Chinese have long had a reputation for cheap knock-offs, and in this case, the shoe seems to fit. I played the demo on Steam a while back and it seemed like an exact copy of Detention in terms of art direction and overall gameplay - only not good. Detention was just perfect - the demo of Firework was kinda like trying to eat one of those plastic food replicas the Japanese put in the storefront windows of their restaurants. It looks the same, but it tastes quite different. I don't want to dog on the work of the Firework dev too bad, because I only played the demo and there might still be a decent game underneath. But the initial impressions were underwhelming to say the least.

Again, even if the game turns out to be perfectly mediocre, the high rating could be easily explained: You're probably aware of the ruckus caused by Devotion. The dev's earlier game Detention was hugely popular in Mainland China - that was until the developer (who happens to be located in a wayward renegade Chinese island province) decided to put a Winnie meme in their next game, at which point Detention's rating dropped from >95% Overwhelmingly Positive into 70%ish territory and the developers were basically seen as traitors to their Mainland fanbase. So in a way, I see this game as little more than an attempt to duplicate Detention's success and popularity by creating a paint-by-numbers copycat, with similar art style, similar gameplay and none of the potential political bombshells.

Again, I haven't played the full game, so this may be an unfair assessment, but it is my initial impression.

I'd say it was a perfect explanation....even more so given the content of your own post, which seems to only prove their points.
As for the term Oriental: it's just a word, bruh......and if anything i'd say it's more -ist/etc to see dark connotations in mere words.

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Good to hear :)

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It's actually for ALL game playing.....so as a result there will likely be less sales on Gog/other game sites....well, from the segment of the chiinese population that follows said laws anyways.

Perhaps you'd care to look at the rest. The following bullet point is the same on both platforms, and uses "oriental".

Here the same: Not an offensive term at all and I hope it keeps that way as long as our brains resist to get dragged to the ,,politically correct,, nonsense by those behind innocent & liberating -agenda- masks...

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Back to the point: Firework vgame. Not my genre, I pass

This game makes a bad first impression with its badly broken English on the game page. It's in desperate need of a native English speaking editor. I imagine the game is the same way.

Moving the goalposts much? The real kicker here is not that the copywriting (which was very obviously written by a non-native English speaker) uses an outdated term, it's that this outdated term is used specifically on gog's store page, arguably to obfuscate the game's origin in an effort to stifle potential controversy.

Besides, they probably went with "Oriental" in the following bullet point because "You can experience the Chinese environment of a Chinese village" would have sounded rather silly.

Okay, so I'm not the only one who thought the game looked like Detention but perhaps not as interesting or as high-quality. I'm glad the developer of that game sells it and their other controversial title on their own store, since GOG will apparently not sell them here. I have to admit even despite it not looking as good, I am tempted by Firework but the thing is, I feel uneasy buying it given the events with the previous titles I allude to in this post. Almost feels like "settling" to buy this approved-title while the other ones are not mentioned and we still have nothing more than the flimsy "many messages from gamers" "explanation". This is also a good time to mention the disparity between GOG acting in that situation, and GOG leaving the botched Hitman Lame of the Year: Be Online Brah What's the Big Deal edition up for sale for what felt like an eternity despite many gamers here giving GOG plenty of messages.

Hmm... When doing a Google search for "firework steam" the preview for the page matches GOG's description:

"Firework is an oriental horror puzzle game. The story takes place in a remote mountain village. An accidental fire at a funeral forces the police to ..."

But then the actual Steam page does say "Chinese" at the start instead of "oriental". If I look at the page using Wayback Machine, the description on Steam is shown to have originally been the same as it is now on GOG.

So, amusing as a deliberate Devotion-related cover-up would be, I'm pretty sure this is genuinely just a case of GOG using the game's original description without any ulterior motives. If I'm not mistaken, the store page descriptions are handled by the dev/publisher, too, so chances are they just sent GOG the original one rather than the barely different current one.

That's some good work, Lou. You'll make sergeant for this.

Oh, give me a break. You want me to believe you can't even find the first bullet point and selectively quote only one line? Like some insincere person just wrote "Moving the goalposts much?"

The first bullet point is the same on Steam and GOG, and starts with "Firework is an oriental horror puzzle game." And you conveniently ignore the rest of the copy. They use "oriental" 5 times on GOG product page and 4 times on Steam product page, and only one of those is because it's followed by "Chinese".


Edit: And TheEndedSkull checking on waybackmachine just adds one more argument to my "it's not GOG's fault this time."

Entirely pastable, there have been descriptions on GOG that have more than once directly mentioned things such as, "See the steam discussion page" or "Join us on defunct platform".

thank you for the only worthwhile post here, friend :D