Black Myth Wukong Streaming Agreement Says No Politics, No China, and No “Feminist Propaganda”
The summer’s hottest game is nearly here, and people are gearing up for it, with fights all over social media about the controversial game ongoing. Every review has become a boiling point, and every post, and I’m going to put myself in the middle of the firing line because of what I came across this morning.
Today’s story is all about Black Myth Wukong, and its creator GameScience (it’s one word now per the company), which rose in prominence following the reveal of Black Myth: Wukong, taking the world by storm. The studio gained additional notoriety from an IGN story which told the story of a studio with a history of sexism and other problematic behaviour in the years before the announcement of their breakout game.
This has fed into certain culture war-types, and while there is generally widespread anticipation for the game (it’s the most wishlisted game on Steam), a certain loud type of personality that decries feminism, diversity, and the like have taken to heroing the game and acting as if it can do no wrong.
Ah, the things I do sometimes because of my beliefs. GameScience (they want you to know it’s now one word by the way) emailed out keys to different content creators on Youtube and Twitch recently along with a short brief of do’s and don’ts. I was able to talk with some of them, most notably ExServ who brought this to my attention initially, and they shared with me the document that includes some very strange terms. This is different then the terms they sent out to outlets for reviews prior to release. I want to note, this isn’t for sponsored content, but merely getting a key. Here is a screen cap of the relevant part of the document:
Oh dear. Let’s break it down by each of the points here.
- Do NOT Insult other influencers or Players
This is pretty reasonable. Some creators will do things but that probably gets ignored as being part of a schtick or the like.
- Do NOT use any offensive language/humor.
Umm, the content creator space is full of this. Like, really really full. Unless you are doing a lot of vetting (which it doesn’t seem they did), this will happen. This is probably a general ‘protect us’ catchall and not THAT weird but is a bit odd.
- Do NOT include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that instigates negative discourse.
Well here’s the first doozy. These weren’t likely to happen much until you decided to bring it up GameScience! Violence well… okay, lets talk about the fact that this is a retelling of Journey to the West, and it is a violent video game. Saying don’t talk about violence is hypocritical and useless here… it would actually mean you can’t talk about a lot of the game if strictly enforced. But, that’s not where we’re looking to be honest.
‘Feminist propaganda’ is here just essentially as words talking about feminism in general. It’s the same type of code words you see from the far right, and refers to anything that treats women as equals or not degrading them really. They don’t want you thinking about their game or how it treats people in it, or the reports about their studio. This is an out-and-out crazy term.
‘Politics’ is another crazy one to have, and given the point I addressed first is probably going to be discussing anything centre or left-leaning, or anything like representation. There is also the fact that GameScience is a Chinese company, and it would also cover say talking about the Uyghurs and how China is using slave labour to create cheap goods on a daily basis, or things like massacres in Tiannaman’s Square or how China is strong-arming Hong Kong and other acts.
Not including ‘Nudity’ is normal, while ‘fetishization’ term is another that begs me to ask them if they have seen the internet. Scratch that, they might not have, behind the Great Firewall. Let’s just say that this is another one of those that well, it’s going to happen GameScience whether you like it or not.
— Do NOT use trigger words such as ‘quarantine’ or ‘isolation’ or ‘COVID-19’
Well we see some more heavy-handedness here, presumably at the behest of the Chinese state either directly, or indirectly because the developers were worried about reactions to it. This is a pretty crazy term to stop people from talking about what they like on it, and things that don’t have anything to do with it.
— Do NOT discuss content related to China’s game industry policies, opinions, news, etc.
And here we have the blanket ‘do not talk about China’ thing because the politics one wasn’t enough. We don’t want you talking about the negative reports about our studio, we don’t want you talking about how the state censors video games, or how approvals have been going, or the news around China. We definitely don’t want you talking about slave labour or the Uyghur genocide. This is an insane term to include in this agreement.
This whole agreement is just crazy, and the way they are handling content creators about it is insane. It’s an incredibly blatant attempt to use soft power and promote the Chinese state by censoring anything that might offend the country, and their own hateful ideology of being against women’s rights and freedoms.
Edit: Since some have asked here’s a redacted version of one of the emails I was shown about it coming.
