Photo/Black Myth: Wukong official website

Black Myth: Wukong, China's first AAA masterpiece video game, was officially launched on August 20, 2024. Its release spurred a sharp increase in the A-share gaming sector with Zhejiang Publishing & Media once hitting the daily limit.

Within one hour of its release, it topped Steam's most-played list with the number of players breaking through 1 million. As of 12:50 AM, the number of online players on the Steam platform reached 1.4 million.

After the launch, the Steam servers also experienced a brief crash. Many users rushed to access the game, only to find that they were unable to log in. However, within about ten minutes, the servers were restored. In addition, some users also reported that the Heybox platform had crashed. Heybox is a gaming community where many users purchased Black Myth: Wukong through the platform. This is not surprising, as the game has been widely anticipated since its first reveal in 2020. To date, it has reached 200 million views in Bilibili and has become the Steam weekly sales champion.

Black Myth: Wukong is developed by Game Science and Tencent holds a 5% stake in the company. The official website of Game Science introduces this game as follows: "This is an action role-playing game set against the backdrop of Chinese mythology. In the game, you will play as a 'person of destiny', embarking on a journey full of danger and surprises to explore the truth of ancient legends."

According to reports, the phenomenon-level heat can be attributed to the world-class game performance. "We have adopted the world-leading ‘Unreal Engine 5' development engine, which can achieve film-level picture quality in both static light and shadow and dynamic effects," said Feng Ji, the founder of Game Science.

Yang Qi, the art director of Game Science, regards it as a "cultural tribute". In order to reproduce the ancient temples in the original work The Journey To The West, Game Science's technical personnel have travelled all over the country to establish China's first virtual asset library of ancient buildings, restoring a large number of historical ancient temples and cultural relics. "In the process of rendering, we even can't bear to erase the dust, preserving the beauty of Eastern architecture to the greatest extent. We believe that the digital expression of Chinese culture can transcend borders."

Undoubtedly, Black Myth: Wukong has demonstrated the potential of digital expression of Chinese culture, bringing an immersive experience of Chinese culture and arousing global resonance.

Feng Ji, the founder of Game Science, said that the development cost of the game is more than 20 million yuan per hour, and the total game time is expected to be more than 20 hours, with the total development cost between 300 million and 400 million yuan. As of July 19th, the game's pre-sale volume has broken records, reaching 1.2 million, with a pre-sale amount of nearly 400 million. Based on this, the game has already recouped its investment.