Black Myth: Wukong launches to almost 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam

simple@lemm.ee to Games@lemmy.world – 93 points –
Black Myth: Wukong on Steam
store.steampowered.com

SteamDB chart showing 1.4 million people playing now

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Isn't this the game where reviewers/streamers(?) are not allowed to mention feminism?

Reviewers were also forbidden from using trigger words such as "COVID-19" and "quarantine".

So if I posted a review saying that Black Myth: Wukong is as badass as when Rosie the Riveter invented COVID in a Chinese lab, would they be upset?

Not sure, but to be on the safe side just don't title it "Black Myth Wukong is the most impactful global phenomenon to come out of China since the pandemic".

It’s funny to me that they even felt a need for this clause. What does the game have to do with feminism or Covid? It’s based on ancient Chinese mythology in ancient China telling a fictional story featuring Chinese mythological beings that are not real. Why would there be any reason to bring feminism or Covid into that in the first place?

It’s so weird and seems really snowflakey to me.

Why would there be any reason to bring feminism or Covid into that in the first place?

From another article:

The cautionary note against "feminist propaganda" is a reminder that Game Science have yet to respond to allegations of pervasive sexist behaviour from November last year. In a lengthy report for IGN, Rebekah Valentine and Khee Hoon Chan described "a studio plagued by claims of sexism", linking this to misogyny elsewhere in the Chinese games industry and on the government-firewalled Chinese internet. The developers have raised the drawbridge in response: when Edders attended a preview event earlier this year, they refused to say anything on the subject in advance.

The irony is that without the warning to attempt to suppress discussion about that, people might have just forgotten about it.

Lots of streamers will play games while discussing other topics, and those topics can often be seen as controversial. Clearly the company wanted to avoid any video existing where someone was discussing unrelated controversial topics over the top of their gameplay.

It backfired on them cause obviously you can't control everyone and everything but I can understand from a business standpoint their desire to remain neutral and not be part of that crowd.

Look at gamergate. The video game internet world is still not far removed from immensely controversial and offensive behaviors. Maybe they just wanted to avoid any association that could theoretically occur.

I'm not excusing them. Just attempting to understand it in any practival sense without immediately becoming alarmist like everyone does.

Setting aside the CCP angle, it comes off kind of like back when Michael Jordan says all political parties buy Jordan's.

Specifically reviewers who want free keys aren’t allowed to mention the feminism stuff. Any reviewer paying for it out of pocket can’t be silenced or censored

How despicable. Hopefully this will Barbara Streisand in their faces eventually.

This is possibly fake as noted on another thread.

It's real according to someone from Forbes: https://nitter.poast.org/PaulTassi/status/1825193786273681489 . Reviewers didn't get these guidelines but some content creators did, which is why everyone's confused.

Also confirmed by SI.com (which I didn't know had video games writing, and it's surprisingly good as it turns out). GI dot biz published a recap yesterday.

It's been long enough that the publisher would have put out a statement by now if it was false.

Yeah it is confusing. Anyway, I still prefer to judge a game on its merits primarily and not on whether some of the people behind it are jerks or hold views antithetical to my own.