Black Myth: Wukong Streaming Guidelines Controversy, Explained

Black Myth: Wukong is a game shrouded in controversy from before it even released. But one of the most notorious pieces of potential controversy comes from the supposedly real streaming guidelines for Black Myth: Wukong that are quite harsh. But are these guidelines actually real?

Are the Streaming Guidelines Real?

From what it appears, these controversial streaming guidelines tell content creators what they can and can’t do while playing this Game Science title. Guidelines are often given with free codes for games, especially ahead of launch. But these particular supposed guidelines are much more unusual.

From what we can gather, though, it appears these guidelines are more than likely real. To be transparent, no such guidelines about politics and feminism were given to us journalists with review codes from what I can tell. Instead, these guidelines seemingly only came to content creators. While still, technically, unconfirmed, supporting evidence from generally trustworthy sources like Forbes’ Paul Tassi seems to indicate this is legitimate.

Controversial Black Myth: Wukong Streaming Guidelines, Explained

With all of this said, what exactly are the controversial Black Myth: Wukong streaming guidelines? Well, it all comes down to some do’s and don’ts for streaming this game. Players should have fun while they play, but they can’t talk about the following items, according to these guidelines:

• Insults of other influencers or players
• Offensive language or humor
• Politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that instigates negative discourse
• Trigger words like “quarantine, isolation, or COVID-19”
• Content related to China’s game industry policies, opinions, news, and so on

Some of these guidelines are generally understandable and should be a thing no matter what, like not insulting others. However, the main controversy here comes from parts like telling content creators they can’t talk about politics, feminism, or even the state of the Chinese game industry.

This idea of controlling the narrative makes sense if this is a sponsored stream, but it appears this is for streamers of the game just given a free code. If this is all true, it is especially controversial since these requests are a bit more specific and odd compared to what we usually see in the industry.

Black Myth: Wukong is available right now for PS5 and PC.