Western game studios should be very nervous about ‘Black Myth: Wukong’

Last month, a little-known Chinese video-game studio called Game Science released what is now one of the biggest games of the year — if not ever. Bloomberg reported that the myth-inspired role-playing game “Black Myth: Wukong” sold over 18 million copies in its first two weeks, making it “one of the fastest starts the global gaming industry has seen.” 

On Steam, the online video-game marketplace, the site’s user metrics showed that “Black Myth: Wukong” reached a peak of over 2.4 million concurrent players in its first two days, setting an all-time record for single-player games on the platform. So how, exactly, did this game take over the world? Well, much like the billion-dollar movies that dominated the box office in the 2010s, the answer boils down to one important factor: it’s big in China.

But to understand how it captured the Chinese market, you first need a sense of how different the country’s gaming landscape is compared to the West’s. The Chinese government still needs to approve every title sold in the country, whether it’s made there or internationally. And for much of the 21st century gaming consoles were banned for fear they were bad for children's health. That led to a profusion of internet cafés. As any gamer could tell you, the games you play at home are not the same you'd play in a dark room full of other gamers. Nor are they financed the same way. 

Even though internet cafés have lost their luster in China, their popularity among gamers led to the development of microtransactions and free-to-play games, which charged for in-game items rather than the game itself, so that people would still spend despite using the same computer to play. Microtransactions form a major chunk of all games revenue globally, thanks mostly to mobile games. 

China has spent the past decade buying up major developers like Bungie, Riot Games, Quantic Dream, and FromSoftware, as well as starting a host of new ones. But what’s new is that China is now opening its own studios to capitalize on the massive industry. And it’s working.

One of China's biggest homegrown gaming studios is MiHoYo, which specializes in open-world role-playing gacha games. Gacha games are named after the Japanese onomatopoeia "gachapon," describing the sound a capsule vending machine makes before it gives you a random toy. MiHoYo's games follow a similar dynamic, letting users spend in-game (or real) currency for a chance to buy new playable characters. Its games “Genshin Impact” and “Honkai: Star Rail” have broken global records, with the former earning $5 billion in less than four years and the latter downloaded from the Apple and Google Play stores 20 million times in its first day. 

The increase in Chinese gamers on Steam is happening across every major genre. A prominent example is “Naraka: Bladepoint,” a “Fortnite”-style battle-royale game by Chinese-owned NetEase Games Montreal. After becoming free to play last summer, it’s consistently been in the top 10 most-played games on Steam since Garbage Day began tracking the platform at the beginning of this year. In fact, the only area of gaming that China has been lagging in, at least up until “Black Myth: Wukong,” was AAA games. The most expensive and bestselling echelon of games, AAA games have always been tied too tightly to consoles to make a dent in China. But Game Science was founded in 2014 to try to change that. 

According to IGN China, “it's considered a very commercially risky move to develop a premium console game” domestically rather than just investing in foreign ones. But it was a gamble that seemed to have paid off once the first gameplay trailer for “Black Myth: Wukong” made a splash heard around the world in August 2020. On its first day, the trailer got nearly 2 million views on YouTube and 10 million on the Chinese equivalent, Bilibili. It was also the top trending hashtag on Chinese social networks Weibo and Douyin. The hype didn't wear off, either. The game became Steam’s bestselling game this June, months before it released.

The game’s influence wasn’t just virtual: after Game Science partnered with Shanxi province’s tourism board to feature local landmarks as locations in the game, hotel bookings in Shanxi reportedly surged by 120%.

Most interesting of all, though, is that China's biggest gaming success story got there by shirking the hallmarks of Chinese gaming. Game Science did not include microtransactions in “Black Myth: Wukong.” There aren't any gacha mechanics. Rather, it's a standard single-player console game similar to “Dark Souls,” inspired by the folk tale “Journey to the West.” 

All this should make Western game studios more than a little nervous. Even though video games are the most popular and profitable they've ever been, the industry outside China has had an atrocious year. Layoffs have plagued every major studio and, despite some massive hits, there have been some incredible misses. To illustrate exactly how wacky the dynamic between Western developers and Chinese studios has become this summer, as a standard game like “Black Myth: Wukong” dominates the charts, Sony's live-service, microtransaction-stuffed shooter game “Concord” shut down after barely two weeks.

The story of China's video-game industry over the last 15 years is not unlike what we've seen with Chinese apps like Temu, Shein, and TikTok. It took Chinese developers a while to figure out what global audiences want, but now that they have, there's no turning back. In fact, “Black Myth: Wukong” was just one of over 100 domestically made titles the Chinese government approved this year. There's a lot more coming, which should make the gaming landscape very interesting.

Garbage Day is an award-winning newsletter that focuses on web culture and technology, covering a mix of memes, trends, and internet drama. We also run a program called Garbage Intelligence, a monthly report tracking the rise and fall of creators and accounts across every major platform on the web. And we'll be sharing some of our findings here in Sherwood. You can subscribe to Garbage Day here.