The first big-budget video game produced by a Chinese developer is being lauded as a success. But while sales are strong, so are accusations of censorship.
“Black Myth: Wukong” is loosely inspired by the Chinese epic “Journey to the West.” Game Science developed the game with the backing of Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent. While the Game Science team comprises former Tencent employees, Tencent holds just a 5% stake in the company.
Chinese media said it’s the most expensive game ever developed in the country. The budget exceeded $50 million and it’s considered China’s first AAA title. AAA is a classification for games produced by mid-sized or large publishers that have large development and marketing budgets.
In the first 48 hours since the game’s release, reviewers and users alike are praising it. It currently has a “generally favorable” score of 81 on video game review aggregator metacritic.
“Black Myth: Wukong” made headlines for being the most-played game on Steam with more than 2.2 million concurrent players as of Wednesday morning, Aug. 21.
But French streamer and video games journalist Benoit Reinier, who goes by the name Ex Serv, criticized the companies involved after reviewers who received advanced copies of the game were provided with a list of topics to avoid.
“I have never seen anything that shameful in my 15 years doing this job,” Reinier said in a French-language video posted to YouTube. “This is very clearly a document which explains that we must censor ourselves.”
Beijing-based Hero Games, a company that handled the marketing for the game, sent out a document featuring a list of do’s and don’ts for content related to the game.
The do category just said to “enjoy the game.”
But the list of don’ts is what caught the attention of reviewers like Reinier. First, reviewers were to avoid using “trigger words such as ‘quarantine’ or ‘isolation’ or ‘COVID-19.’”
China faced mass protests in 2022 over its strict “zero-Covid” restrictions, which included lockdowns in major cities. There was also the proliferation of the term “China virus” that manifested in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic.
The Chinese government, for its part, continually denies any evidence of the Wuhan lab leak theory.
Another bullet told reviewers to refrain from including “politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization and other content that instigates negative discourse.”
It’s unclear what exactly constitutes “feminist propaganda,” but a report from France24 in July said the Chinese Communist Party wants women to focus on motherhood and the home, and it has cracked down on feminist activities, like talking about discrimination, inequality and striving for independence.
China also locked up a journalist for writing about the #MeToo movement, saying she’s guilty of subverting state power.
Meanwhile, another point in the document said do not “discuss content related to China’s game industry, policies, opinions, news, etc.”
China famously made efforts to reduce video game addiction in young people including limiting game time to no more than 90 minutes on weekdays and three hours on weekends and holidays. It also banned incentive-based gaming rewards that can lead to spending more in the game.
But even with those issues, the game still secured $56 million in pre-orders, according to Citi.
Chinese-produced games don’t usually make a global impact. Goldman Sachs says the immediate success of “Black Myth: Wukong” opens the door to more Chinese AAA games on the global market.
The game itself doesn’t include microtransactions, which have become commonplace in nearly every major game released recently. That means the developer and publisher are only relying on the one-time sale price of the game.
But Chinese state-owned paper Global Times said the important thing is, “China is finally getting its own AAA game that can excite the world.”
