Codes for review and content creation around Black Myth: Wukong, the highly-anticipated action game from Chinese studio Game Science, went out earlier this month ahead of its August 20 launch. It now appears that at least some streamers and YouTubers who received the game early were also told explicitly not to mention several topics ranging from covid and to “feminist propaganda.”
Ex-Gamekult journalist Benoit “ExServ” Reinier was one of the people who received the bizarre set of restrictions in a document attached to review code request. Reinier shared the document on social media over the weekend and made a video about it, while GLHF reports that the person who sent the list of content prohibitions is a member of Hero Games, the co-publisher of Black Myth: Wukong.
The document now circulating includes a list of “Do’s & Don’ts.” “Enjoy the game” is under the “Do” heading. The Don’t heading includes the following:
● Do NOT insult other influencers or players.
● Do NOT use any offensive language/humor.
● Do NOT include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that instigates negative discourse.
● Do NOT use trigger words such as ‘quarantine’ or ‘isolation’ or ‘COVID-19′.
● Do NOT discuss content related to China’s game industry policies, opinions, news, etc
Kotaku, like many gaming sites, received advanced access for the PC version of the game (PlayStation 5 codes are still MIA), and was asked to abide by a normal set of requests around not mentioning various spoilers in the roughly 30-40 hour adventure loosely inspired by the classic Chinese story Journey to the West. There was no mention of these restrictions, and it’s not clear how may other content creators received it. Game Science didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The restriction around mentioning “feminist propaganda” comes in the mids of an ongoing discussion around Game Science that kicked off early this year, after IGN reported on past sexist remarks and statements from developers associated with the studio. The investigation put some of the Black Myth: Wukong founders’ history in the larger context of sexism within the Chinese video game industry and how that will or won’t change as the market becomes more open.
One of the most notable things about that report was the fact that Game Science never responded to it, and has so far resisted acknowledging any of the controversy surrounding it, which included online harassment from certain toxic fans targeting the authors’ of the IGN report as well as even recent reviewers of the game who gave it anything less than a top score. In previews earlier this summer, Game Science refused to comment on the report about past sexism by some of the game’s developers, and recently denied The Guardian, one of the outlets that pressed the studio on the controversy, a code for the game.
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