Black Myth: Wukong has set the second-highest player count in Steam history, a spectacular start for a Chinese action RPG that has catapulted it to the top of the global bestseller list. It’s also a great game: we called it “a mythical action RPG with wildly bizarre characters and gutsy boss fights” in our 87% review . This should be the only Black Myth: Wukong story out there today, but it’s not — what would otherwise have been a celebratory launch has been marred by controversy that GameScience seems reluctant to address, including in a recent interview with PC Gamer .
Black Myth’s streamer guidelines were leaked ahead of launch, revealing a list of “unacceptable” content that included “feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that incites negative discourse,” as well as “content related to politics, opinions, news, etc. in the gaming industry in China.” These restrictions came from co-publisher Hero Games and were not shared with PC Gamer or other press outlets. Naturally, streamers and everyone else immediately began talking about the topics they were prohibited from talking about—the Streisand effect never fails to amaze.
It’s impossible not to see these streamer guidelines as a continuation of the vulgar and sexist comments made by GameScience’s founders in a widely shared IGN report on how the studio “the history of sexism complicates its journey westward.”
GameScience has largely refrained from interviews (at least with the Western press) since the early stages of Black Myth’s development, but I spoke with a studio representative in overdue July to discuss the making of the Journey to the West adaptation for PC Gamer magazine. During the interview, I asked the representative — who asked to be listed as a member of the studio rather than by name — if he could address the specifics in the report.
“We have no comment, sorry,” Game Science said through a translator. “We just want to answer questions related to the game and gameplay.”
It was a frustrating answer, considering we spent a good portion of the interview discussing the studio’s growth from a compact team to a gigantic enough team to tackle a single-player AAA game, and the GameScience founders’ first attempt at adapting Journey to the West into a previous MMO. Our conversation didn’t stop at gameplay details, but “no comment” was the same GameScience passed on to The Guardian during a practical demonstration in July.
As we discussed the challenges of finding staff for such an ambitious game—that initial wow-ser in the form of the reveal trailer was designed in part to lend a hand recruit recent talent—I asked again if the controversy and repeated questions had affected staff or led to any internal changes at GameScience. The answer, again, was “no comment.”
I don’t know if GameScience management just thinks there was nothing wrong with the past sexually suggestive recruitment postersor they think the answer will only cause them more trouble. Do they still hold views similar to those co-founder Yang Qi posted on Weibo in 2013, stating that the games men and women enjoy are determined by “biological conditions”?
“When you held a heavy machine gun in your hand and shot at governments in your sleep, women dreamed of bags that would make their friends jealous,” he wrote, according to IGN translation.
If GameScience doesn’t stand for this kind of questionable past behavior, why not apologize for it with a basic statement that it has matured over the years? Sincere or not, it’s the simple way out that thousands of celebrities, influencers, and business people have taken in the past. GameScience has chosen not to take it.
There may be tender internal reasons why GameScience is avoiding comment — the risk of running afoul of regulators who tightly control China’s video game market. (One of the complicated details, for example, is alleged photo of Qi showing the middle finger to former Chinese President Mao Zedong as reported on Yahoo! News). But this is pure speculation.
It’s tough not to read this silence as a sign that GameScience has nothing to apologize for, as the game’s review count on Steam is close to 130,000, 96% of which are positive, showing that the studio’s silence hasn’t had much of an impact.
