‘Black Myth: Wukong’ Is a Hit. But Why Is the Game So Controversial?
The expectations for Black Myth: Wukong have been sky-high since its first reveal back in 2020, which teased an action RPG with breathtaking graphics, set in a world based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West with a Dark Souls-style wrapping. After six years of development by independent studio Game Science, Black Myth: Wukong was released on Aug. 20 for PC and PS5, causing a stir in terms of sheer number of players amassed in just a few days.
At the time of writing, there are over 2.1 million concurrent players on Steam alone, as well as 132,000 viewers on Twitch watching dozens of streamers playing it. Black Myth: Wukong is, based on numbers alone, a rampant success. Beyond the stats, critical reception paints a mixed picture of a game mired in technical issues on the PC version, and multiple controversies surrounding both its development and the days around launch.
Here’s everything you need to know about Black Myth: Wukong, from how it parallels other hit games in its genre to why its reception has been so contentious.
What is Black Myth: Wukong?
Black Myth: Wukong is a single-player action RPG inspired by Chinese mythology. You play as the Destined One, following the footsteps of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King and the main protagonist of Journey to the West. Acting as a follow-up of sorts to the novel’s events, the Destined One must retrieve the six relics of Wukong with the help of familiar characters from the original story.
Based on the initial trailer, many expected the game to be a “Soulslike” in the vein of 2022’s Elden Ring or 2023’s Lies of P, but that’s not exactly accurate. Like in those games, you face enemies with massive health bars, dramatic attacks, and complex patterns to memorize to take them down. There are bonfire-esque checkpoints scattered around the world for you to save your game, tend to your upgrades, and craft items. But it also lacks many of the key elements of traditional “Soulslikes.” There’s no penalty for dying or shared in-game currency or progressions that are lost if you hit a “game over” screen. Checkpoints are usually a few meters away from boss encounters, too, so you’re not forced to repeat long and tedious paths for a retry.
Levels aren’t exactly labyrinthine either, another staple of developer FromSoftware, whose Dark Souls series inspired the “Soulslike” genre. While there’s exploration, and an array of items to reward your curiosity if you stray from the main path, the structure is quite linear. In fact, critics were surprised to see that Black Myth: Wukong ended up being a boss rush of sorts, taking you from one tough enemy encounter to the next with short sections breaking the pace in between featuring a few smaller enemies here and there.
The bulk of the experience centers around set pieces packed with spectacle and a dynamic combat system to plunge through them. Transformations and spirits are the main standouts, granting you signature moves of enemies or momentarily letting you shape-shift into previously defeated bosses. The latter can be anything from a slow-moving character that has a massive rock on its head to stomp the ground and charge forward with force to an anthropomorphic tiger wielding a greatsword.
While Black Myth: Wukong isn’t an easy game by any means, you often have a large variety of tools at your disposal. The protagonist has plenty of surprises under his robe to mess with enemies, such as momentarily stunning them in place, creating decoys for foes to target while you take a breather to heal yourself or charge a powerful attack, making them lose their balance and hit the ground Monster Hunter-style, and more. Part of the charm is to collect as many of these transformations and spirits as possible and come up with creative ways to exploit weaknesses.
On the surface, the popularity of Black Myth: Wukong is hard to deny. Less than 24 hours after launch on Aug. 20, it reached second spot on the most popular Steam games with over 2 million concurrent players. As such, it managed to surpass other popular single-player titles like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077, as well as multiplayer behemoths like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2. The only other record left to break is the peak that PUBG: Battlegrounds saw back in January 2018 with over 3.2 million players.
As reported by PCGamesN, the first day’s player peak saw a significant drop off toward the evening. The dip, which took place around 5 p.m. ET, left the game with just over 290,000 players. Considering 5 p.m. ET is equal to 5 a.m. China Standard Time (CST), it’s likely that most players gradually went to sleep throughout the night. This was backed up by Daniel Ahmad, director of research and insights at Niko Partners who analyzes the video games market in Asia and MENA.
In a blog post, Ahmad also shared details on how Wukong was the Number One most viewed game on Chinese game live streaming platforms on its first day, breaking previous records for single-player titles. Meanwhile, Singapore-based outlet The Straits Times reported that a number of Chinese companies are giving their employees time off to play the game, as well as reimbursing the cost of the game for those who bought it.
It may sound crazy for businesses to be making a video game release into a paid holiday, but in context it makes sense. The Chinese games industry has exploded in recent years with hits like 2020’s free-to-play RPG Genshin Impact, but Wukong represents the country’s first big AAA-caliber foray into the global market. It helps that its source material, Journey to the West, is among the most beloved and recognizable pieces of Asian literature, inspiring everything from Dragon Ball to Jackie Chan Adventures.
In terms of critical reception, the current score on Metacritic for the PC version of Black Myth: Wukong is sitting at 81, based on 69 reviews. Some outlets praised how Sun Wukong’s abilities are adapted from the novel to the game’s combat, as well as an unusual combo system that encourages fast-paced reactions. While the experience as a whole shows clear ambition with standout boss fights, level design lacks depth, the difficulty curve can sometimes feel uneven, and the story can be hard to follow without knowledge of the Journey to the West novel.
Others broke down in detail experiences with a number of technical issues. These ranged from several crashes on PC to instances of the player character falling through the game’s world, forcing a restart during some boss fights. It’s hard to keep a steady performance, too, with some users having struggling to run the game even with high-end PC graphics cards.
It’s worth mentioning that footage of some of these issues wasn’t present in a few reviews due to embargo restrictions, such as story-related spoilers like some boss fights. IGN, for example, uploaded a second version with updated footage on launch day. Outlets didn’t receive keys for the PS5 version either which, as Digital Foundry reports, is also a bit of a mess, with performance drops and visual woes. The latter is surprising, if not somewhat ironic, Sony’s extensive promotion of Wukong as a PlayStation 5 game. The game will eventually be released on Xbox Series consoles, although tech issues are reportedly delaying that version.
Other issues are related to audio, such as languages jumping from English to Chinese and vice versa at random, as well as some in-game journals seemingly lacking localization to English. Still, your experience may vary, especially on PC, where different personal setups lead to all sorts of results. Game Science seems aware of these problems, as indicated by a Steam blog post on launch day warning that, despite multiple internal tests, “Occasional serious issues may still arise” due to the scale of different software and hardware environments across PC.
Why is it controversial?
Despite the hype surrounding Black Myth: Wukong over the years, its path hasn’t been without significant controversy. The most notable was a report by IGN, which compiled alleged sexist comments made by the studio’s founders and other internal team members, providing a deep look into misogynistic remarks that plagued the game’s development, and a toxic work culture. During an interview in late July with PC Gamer, the outlet asked a Game Science representative if they could address the details in the report, to which they replied, “We have no comment, we’re sorry. We’re only looking to answer questions related to the game and the gameplay.” IGN received a similar response after a demo session at this year’s Summer Game Fest, despite Game Science telling the outlet it’d have a statement “related to the reports of sexism” during the appointment.
Leading to launch, an email sent from the Black Myth: Wukong marketing team, which was shared by a few content creators on social media and later verified by news outlets, indicated a list of topics to avoid alongside the key to the game. The list includes standout items such as “feminist propaganda,” “COVID-19,” and “content related to China’s industry policies, opinion, news, etc.,” some which are related to IGN’s report.
The email was intended for content creators who planned to cover the game on launch, but didn’t include a nondisclosure agreement. Members of the press and reviewers who were sent a key before launch did not receive the list. As reported by Aftermath, the “anti-feminist propaganda” streaming restrictions are unusual, but not entirely unprecedented for the usual guidelines of sponsorship activation deals between brands and content creators. In the case of Wukong, since the email didn’t involve a sponsorship contract or NDA, there was no way to legally enforce the list’s items. This led to some streamers mocking the situation like MOONMOON, who ran a nearly eight-hour-long livestream on launch day with 324,124 views, named the stream “Covid-19 Isolation Taiwan (Is A Real Country) Feminism Propaganda.” The VOD of the stream features the phrases “Human Rights” and “High Speed Rail.”
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September 02, 2024
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