Our Black Myth: Wukong review hails the game as “a generous, soulful adventure hybrid that works within its limitations and offers a beautiful challenge to solve with a magical toolkit.” Reviewer Edders went so far as to find the world more engaging than Elden Ring’s—a veritable god-defying rhetoric. Players seem to agree. The game released last night and has already racked up a peak concurrent player count of 1.44 million—the fourth-highest mark ever on Steam, surpassed only by Counter-Strike, Palworld, and PUBG. By that measure, it’s the platform’s most popular single-player game of all time.
All this goodwill was, however, spoiled by a Steam code distribution message to streamers and other “content creators” ahead of launch that included reactionary, non-binding demands – no mention of “trigger words” like “Covid-19,” no discussion of “politics” or “feminist propaganda,” and no mention of “China’s gaming industry policies, opinions, news, etc.”
The Google document in question apparently comes from a representative of Chinese publisher Hero Games, one of developer Game Science's largest outside investors, which also partnered through an investment with Wuthering Waves creator Kuro Games Studio. It was shared on Bluesky by French journalist Benoit Reinier over the weekend and was subsequently picked up by Forbes and VideoGames SI. IGN also verified it, citing an anonymous source. I reached out to Game Science for comment on the matter, but did not hear back.
The email outlines the various do's and don'ts for people who stream or create other types of content about Black Myth: Wukong. Under the “Do's” section, we only find “Enjoy the game!” Under the “Don'ts” section, we find the following:
• DO NOT insult other influencers or players.
• DO NOT use offensive language or humor.
• DO NOT include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that incites negative discourse.
• DO NOT use trigger words such as “quarantine”, “isolation” or “COVID-19”.
• DO NOT discuss content related to China's gaming industry policies, opinions, news, etc.
The “feminist propaganda” warning is a reminder that Game Science has yet to respond to allegations of widespread sexist behavior from last November. In a lengthy report for IGN, Rebekah Valentine and Khee Hoon Chan describe “a studio plagued by allegations of sexism,” linking it to misogyny elsewhere in the Chinese games industry and on the government-firewalled Chinese internet. The developers have pulled up the drawbridge in response: When Edders attended a preview event earlier this year, they declined to say anything about the topic in advance.
The request not to focus on Covid, meanwhile, appears to reflect the Chinese government's tendency to censor discussion of the disease and preventative measures.
I don’t know much about the inner workings of Chinese game publishing or the Chinese gaming community, but yesterday, Lu-Hai Liang published an interesting op-ed for Nikkei exploring the significance of Black Myth: Wukong to the regional games industry and to Chinese gamers. It’s a high-profile, “triple-A” release from a country that, according to Liang’s analysis, has no history of “premium” single-player offerings due to government regulation of consoles, and is associated abroad with free-to-play gacha mechanics like those found in Genshin Impact — not to mention the Sinophobic backlash against international investment from Chinese publishers like Tencent.
According to Liang, Wukong's evident quality and global popularity have made it an appealing game to Chinese nationalists, which has sometimes led to chauvinistic criticism from the game's reviewers, particularly after IGN's report on sexism within Game Science. “There's a sharp edge to the online reaction, and the attachment Chinese players feel to Black Myth: Wukong can tip over into nationalist pride,” Liang writes.
I'll let you know if I hear from the developers. In the meantime, Hero Games has just announced CrisisX, a story about a devastating infestation in a sleepy coastal town in the United States. The game will be shown at Gamescom this week. I wonder if they'll ask booth attendees to avoid mentioning quarantines in their coverage.
In a press release about CrisisX, Hero Games CEO Daniel Wu also outlines the company’s ambition to expand its publishing operations to Western markets. “We are deeply invested in global markets, and with CrisisX, we want to take Hero Games to the next level,” he wrote. “We believe now is the right time to introduce ourselves and our products to a wider audience.”