On Tuesday, the highly anticipated action-brawler game “Black Myth: Wukong” debuted worldwide on PC and PlayStation 5.
Created by Chinese developer Game Science, the title was an immediate record-breaking success. It became the most-played game on PC gaming platform Steam, with over 2.3 million concurrent players, according to SteamDB. It just barely beat out fellow foreign-developed indie title PalWorld as the second-highest all-time peak of players.
But leading up to its release, the title was wrought with controversy with gamers and creators online, making its victory ring a bit more hollow.
Black Myth Wukong was first teased with a 13-minute gameplay trailer in 2020, pulling in millions of views in just a few months. It hit in a way that Chinese-developed games hadn’t before, becoming a phenomenon so hyped that Game Science had to put a notice on their door shooing away unsolicited visitors, according to a report from IGN China.
But as the 2024 release date approached, reporters started looking into the company’s history. In November 2023, IGN released a massive report examining the social media posts and culture inside Game Science, which “point to a culture of ingrained sexism.”
Back in 2013, lead artist and co-founder Yang Qi wrote on the Chinese social media site Weibo. Qi said that “games made for women and men are completely different, due to their biological differences,” according to IGN.
On a 2015 recruitment poster, the company implied that “friends with benefits” were “an office perk.” In another advertisement, it said, “Fatties should fuck off.”
The company declined to comment on these claims with IGN. In a recent interview with PCGamer leading up to the game’s release, the developer also declined to comment on the claims of sexism. It added, “We’re only looking to answer questions related to the game and the gameplay.”
In the weeks leading up to Black Myth Wukong’s release, streamer guidelines for those who received early access to the game also leaked online. Streamers could not talk about “politics,” “feminist propaganda,” “COVID-19,” or content related to China.
Originally, the list of rules seemed so absurd that they had to be fake. However, both IGN and Forbes confirmed their legitimacy.
It isn’t unusual for streamers who want to play games prerelease to have to agree to some form of embargo. These embargoes often include rules of what creators can and can’t post. But those rules are usually about the game, levels, and secrets that developers don’t want getting out and spoiling the fun. Having strict guidelines around politics and feminism is unheard of.
Some creators and fans spoke out on social media about how strange these rules are. “Whoever wrote this list is terminally online & NEEDS to log off ASAP,” wrote streamer Joseph Morran on X. “These guidelines are ridiculous,” game designer Ke’eg tweeted.
While these stories have soured the game to some creators on social media, some very loud voices have only used these stories to bolster their anti-woke ideology. Influencer Mark Kern, a controversial voice on X who has used his platform to attack women in games, has consistently been targeting the author of the November IGN story.
Now, the actual gameplay for “Black Myth Wukong” is harder to find on our feeds, replaced with culture war smack talk and ethical arguing. The game will most likely be considered a success when we learn about the amount of copies sold. However, its legacy will forever be tainted by the hands of those who made it and its loudest cheerleaders.
