San Francisco Frontiers - No 'feminist propaganda': hit Chinese video game in censorship row

Released globally on Tuesday, "Black Myth" rapidly became one of the most successful Chinese-made games ever, as measured by the number of players on gaming platform Steam.

It combines the classic 16th-century Chinese novel "Journey to the West" with cutting-edge graphics as gamers step into the shoes of a Monkey King to do battle with demons in a mythical world.

But in the run up to the game's release, video streamers reported receiving a document from co-publishers Hero Games warning them to avoid topics including "feminist propaganda" or "politics" when they received a passkey to play the game, an email exchange seen by AFP showed.

Gamers were also warned against any reference to "Covid-19", "isolation" or "quarantine" -- likely a reference to China's pandemic-era policies that placed millions under arbitrary lockdowns and sparked civil unrest.

They were also told to avoid commenting on "China's game industry policies, opinions, news, etc".

Benoit Reinier, a French video game content creator, confirmed to AFP on Wednesday that he had received the guidelines and shared his email exchange with the firm's representative.

In a YouTube video, Reinier said he would not stream the game on his channel in response to the guidelines, he described as "censorship".

"I have never seen something so shameful," he said in the video.

"It is very clearly a document which explains to us that we must censor ourselves and we must not talk about subjects considered negative such as politics."

- 'Foreign bias' -

Neither Hero Games nor the game's developer Game Science responded to requests for comment on the document.

But Chinese gamers have rallied to the game's defence, with some painting any criticism of China's first "Triple A" title -- some of it focusing on the lack of diversity in the game -- as evidence of foreign bias.

"Feminists have always tried to achieve their anti-China goals by smearing and suppressing traditional Chinese culture, but I believe they will definitely fail," read a post on Weibo, an X-like platform, which defended the game on Wednesday.

Other Chinese social media users also targeted reviews by foreign media that awarded scores considered low.

A review by Canada-based Screen Rant was ridiculed for marking the game down for "lacking in inclusivity and diversity".

"How can it be lacking diversity when it has so many monsters?" read one Weibo comment under a post about Screen Rant's score of 3 out of 5.

Another post accused foreign gaming review platforms of "joining the ranks of those smearing China".

"Seeing that China has released a hugely successful game, they start relentlessly pushing ideologies like LGBTQ and feminism," the user added.

The game remains one of the most played on Steam, with a peak of more than 2.2 million concurrent players since its release Tuesday.

E.Cruz--SFF