Game Sciences’ Black Myth: Wukong seemingly has become yet another smoking gun for video game journalists who’ve tried so desperately to undermine and exterminate hype for China’s indie sensation by continually regurgitating specific narratives penned by IGN over allegations of sexism.
The campaign against Black Myth: Wukong likely originated from reports that Sweet Baby Inc., a narrative and character design consultancy, attempted to extort the Chinese developers into paying a $7 million fee for their services. When the developers refused, it seemingly triggered a wave of sexism accusations.
Previews were published, and now the game has officially launched to widespread acclaim, despite outlets like Screen Rant criticizing the lack of real-world diversity and inclusivity in a fictional game based on Chinese mythology, developed entirely by Chinese creators.
Reviewer Samar Abedian, who was involved with “Splendid Communications,” a UK-based marketing and communications agency specializing in corporate brand campaigns, had her name excluded from Screen Rant’s article, which docked points from the game’s score due to its perceived lack of inclusivity.
Initially, I had my own reservations about Black Myth: Wukong after learning that the game was sponsored by NVIDIA. This often signals potential issues with performance and optimization, a theory that was confirmed when a Benchmark tool, rarely ever released before a game’s launch revealed these concerns to be valid.
The game is poorly optimized, which is typical for titles built on Unreal Engine 5, though by no means is it the worst I’ve encountered. Players with systems from the past four years should be able to run the game at 1080p native resolution with a mix of high and medium settings without any major issues.
The highest “cinematic” preset, however, offers little visual improvement and is a waste of graphical resources, the game looks great enough on lower graphical presets.
Since Black Myth: Wukong is a sponsored title for NVIDIA, ray tracing has been integrated into the game. Specifically, it includes Path Tracing, branded in-game as “NVIDIA Full Ray Tracing.”
However, enabling this feature drastically reduces performance, offering minimal visual improvements aside from a few shiny, reflective puddles of water and improved shadows at the cost of significant performance loss.
The game exemplifies how modern developers increasingly rely on upscaling technologies like AMD’s FSR and NVIDIA’s DLSS as a performance crutch. To play the game with Path Tracing enabled or at resolutions like 1440p or higher, you’re forced to use these technologies.
NVIDIA sees significant potential in Game Science and their release of Black Myth: Wukong, with various AIB vendors producing themed variants of NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs to align with the game.
Given NVIDIA’s dominant market share in China, this collaboration makes perfect sense, as Chinese gamers are extremely loyal and dedicated to locally produced games such as those made by miHoYo.
Despite corporate ties and the game’s performance issues on PC, Black Myth: Wukong has launched on Steam to overwhelming success. The challenging action RPG title quickly surpassed one million concurrent players, with the number continuing to climb beyond 1.4 million on PC alone.
According to the Steam stats page, Black Myth: Wukong currently has 1,443,570 concurrent players. This impressive figure places it above titles like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and even the free-to-play Dota 2 in terms of concurrent player count. Black Myth: Wukong joins the ranks of indie success stories, similar to Palworld, which launched earlier this year and reached 2.1 million concurrent players on Steam.
Currently, Black Myth: Wukong is the fourth most-played game on Steam, sitting just behind Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / CS2.
Given that it’s a school night for much of the world, I anticipate the player count will surge even higher tomorrow as the game weighs in at over 100GB and is more or less being downloaded by a large volume of consumers at this point in time.
The game’s monumental launch success likely comes as a disappointment to video game journalists who have criticized it, echoing IGN’s narrative of sexism in an effort to dissuade consumers from buying it. Notably, Kotaku has seemingly refused to review the game at all or are possibly still in the middle of theirs.
Journalists are not pleased, fearing that Black Myth: Wukong might become another phenomenon like Hogwarts Legacy. Reports indicate that the game’s content guidelines for streamers and content creators include restrictions on certain topics. This is a common practice, where developers provide game keys to reviewers and content creators under an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), requiring them to follow specific guidelines and standards.
This approach is also seen in the consumer hardware market, particularly with CPUs and GPUs in the DIY PC space. Companies like Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA impose regulations and mandatory guidelines that reviewers and content creators must follow when reviewing their products.
Sometimes, reviewers receive a dedicated kit, such as a CPU paired with a specific motherboard and memory, which must be used together. Vendors often require reviewers to benchmark certain programs and games that present the product in a favorable light, or they may restrict coverage of certain titles altogether.
The same practices apply in the game industry, as demonstrated by Ubisoft flying content creators to Disneyland and GmanLives releasing a preview video for Star Wars Outlaws a month before its official release. He had received a review copy well in advance, and his take on the game was surprisingly positive.
Video game journalism outlets like PC Gamer and Kotaku seem notably offended and confused by Game Sciences’ regulations for Black Myth: Wukong. These guidelines restrict reviewers from discussing political issues, including potential fetishization due to the game’s “anthropomorphic” designs, and explicitly prohibit any “feminist propaganda” from being mentioned in reviews.
The game has faced significant scrutiny from Western developers following IGN’s allegations of sexism. These allegations arose after the game reportedly did not pay Sweet Baby Inc. to transform its Chinese mythology-based game, featuring monkey men and wolf people, into one with progressive queer Black characters to appeal to a broader international audience.
This situation mirrors how video game journalists have largely ignored Ubisoft’s attempt to reinterpret Japanese history with their samurai-themed Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, while focusing on accusations of “colorism” and “cultural appropriation” in miHoYo’s Genshin Impact.
Additionally, due to the restrictive environment in China, where speaking out against the Communist Party can lead to severe consequences, reviewers were instructed to avoid mentioning COVID-19 or related terms, as well as the policies and news storys of China’s gaming industry.
This effectively prevents outlets and creators from discussing the IGN-related sexist allegations in their reviews. While such demands are not unusual, they are only “problematic” now because they clash with the narratives of Western game journalists, who appear frustrated by being constrained from criticizing the developers over allegations of sexism and other political issues.
Ultimately, it’s important to remember that it’s just a video game, treat it as such.
It’s quite rare for a challenging action RPG to achieve such a high concurrent player count, especially if it’s a single-player game. However, as seen with Hogwarts Legacy, gamers are increasingly attuned to political agendas affecting their games.
When journalists collectively attempt to “boycott” or criticize a game, it often boosts its visibility and reputation among consumers, who are predominantly men. Despite performance issues and the reliance on upscaling technologies for playability, players appear to be enjoying the game, which is contributing to its success.
As political biases in gaming journalism become increasingly evident, yet another game they have tried to discredit has achieved global success.
