They said they should not mention Chinese politics, Covid or “feminist propaganda.”
Tomorrow, the long-awaited action game Black Myth: Wukong from the Chinese studio Game Science, which we first tried at last year’s Gamescom, is released. A few days ago, the first foreign reviews arrived, which were quite positive, although they mentioned a relatively large number of errors or optimization problems. In addition, however, a strange case emerged in which it was unclear how things really were.
It all started on Thursday, August 17, when a screenshot of instructions for content creators who received a key for the game surfaced online. Aside from one positive instruction, “Enjoy the game,” the documentary mostly focuses on what creators shouldn’t do. The beginning still seems relatively normal, don’t insult other players or influencers, don’t use offensive language and humor, but other parts are a bit surprising.
The third line, in addition to politics, violence, or nudity, mentions the term “feminist propaganda,” which is itself a somewhat politically charged term. Even more bizarre is the next line, which states that creators should not use words like quarantine, isolation, or Covid-19. The final point mentions that content creators should not talk about politics, opinions, or news related to the Chinese gaming industry.
The screenshot was first created by French content creator Benoit Reynier, aka ExServ, who shared it on the social network BlueSky and then went into more detail in a YouTube video, stating that he no longer wanted anything to do with the game and would not cover it.
VideoGames.si contacted Reinier and confirmed the authenticity of the emails he received. Other creators received the instructions as well, but another was contacted by renowned journalist Paul Tassi from Forbes, who also confirmed the authenticity of the emails. All of them belong to Hero Games, co-publisher of Black Myth: Wukong and the main investor of the developer studio Game Science.
It should be noted that these guidelines were indeed only given to content creators, not reviewers, but even there the process was very strange. IGN journalist Travis Northup told the Bitcast podcast that the developers had requests that were already hindering the creation of a review, such as limiting the length of reviews to no more than 10 minutes. Northup added that IGN did not agree to some of the terms and was given the opportunity to opt out, but smaller outlets do not have that option.
Source :Indian TV
