Unsurprisingly for a game that broke records on Steam just hours after its release, Black Myth: Wukong is getting DLC, the first in a series of projects that will continue the action epic set in Chinese mythology.
That's from a new Bloomberg interview with Daniel Wu, co-founder of Hero Games, the largest outside shareholder of Wukong developers Game Science. It's not yet clear what the DLC actually consists of and when it will be released, but the article compares it to Shadow Of The Erdtree, which shows how a timely and significant expansion “could lead to a new wave of sales for the original.”
I imagine there will be new bosses and a few meditation spots, but perhaps they'll enrich the environment in less combative or progression-focused ways. Edders, who wrote our Black Myth: Wukong review, is hoping for some sort of Discovery Mode.
DLC aside, the Bloomberg article delves into the history of both companies: a much-publicized 2017 meeting between Wu and Apple chief Tim Cook that went nowhere; Game Science’s “four consecutive failures,” including several free mobile games, before launching Wukong; and the fact that even after Wukong’s success, the 2,000-person Hero Games team hasn’t made a profit, with Game Science now worth “several billion yuan.”
Hero Games invested 60 million yuan ($8.5 million) in Game Science in 2017. They are apparently not profitable, in part because they are still trying to make money off of previous Game Science fiascos, but Wu also notes that “this has been the most dire year for the Chinese games industry yet”, with broader economic hardships leading to cuts in entertainment spending and a series of cancellations.
One way to grow Wukong’s audience could be to tailor it to appeal more to overseas players. According to Game Developer, the vast majority of launch sales came from China.
As is usual at Hero Games, Wu declined to answer Bloomberg’s questions about an infamous guidance document that asked English-speaking Wukong streamers and video makers to refrain from discussing “feminist propaganda,” Covid prevention measures, or Chinese government policy. In what a less generous soul might read as an exercise in creepy self-disclosure, the (non-legally binding) warning about “feminist propaganda” came after an extensive IGN report last year that Game Science had a culture of sexism.
The developers and their partners have steadfastly avoided discussing or taking questions about the subject. Back in August, I asked a PR representative for Black Myth: Wukong about the publisher's “Dos and Don'ts” and got a “we unfortunately can't comment at this time” response a week or two later.