Black Myth: Wukong is finally out, and millions of players are already embarking on their Journey to the West. But its pre-launch period was marred with controversy, with one streamer, MOONMOON, now taking advantage of the hype train to make fun of the devs.
When the developers at Game Science issued review keys to publications, they made sure to attach a letter of “DOs and DON’Ts,” which reviewers should follow when playing the game. The letter notoriously prohibited the use of “feminist propaganda,” among other subjects, and even had a list of banned words like “COVID-19, pandemic,” and so on.
On the day the game came out, however, MOONMOON sought to spite the devs by launching a Twitch stream (which is currently the most-watched Black Myth coverage) that included all of the above in a title called: “COVID-19 isolation Taiwan (is a real country) feminism propaganda.”
MOONMOON’s viewers continued the trolling spree and didn’t let it end with just the title. They’ve posted numerous copypastas in both Chinese and English, mostly containing points of political contention within China itself that memes used to propagate as being bannable offenses in the country. It should be said, however, that the forbidden topics and words given by the devs to publications were in regard to review keys only, and creators who got the game themselves were allowed to speak on any topic they saw fit.
Black Myth: Wukong is out now and already seeing over 1.4 million concurrent players, ahead of both Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077‘s player records. At the time of writing, it’s also beating out Valve’s own CS2 by a whopping 600,000 players. All the hype surrounding the Chinese Soulslike is likely to drive the numbers up even more once peak hours are hit, making it 2024’s biggest game.
