Black Myth: Wukong’s first DLC is aiming for a Shadow Of The Erdtree-style second wave of popularity

Not very shockingly for a game that set Steam records within hours of release, Black Myth: Wukong is getting DLC, the first in a series of follow-up projects that continue the action epic’s explorations of Chinese mythology.

That’s from a new Bloomberg interview with Daniel Wu, co-founder of Hero Games, the largest external shareholder in Wukong developers Game Science. What the DLC actually consists of and when it’ll launch remain to be seen, but the article compares it to Shadow Of The Erdtree, which has demonstrated how a timely and substantial expansion “can spur a fresh flurry of sales for the original.”

I imagine there will be new bosses and a few more meditation spots, but perhaps they’ll flesh out the setting in less combative or progression-driven ways. Edders, who authored our Black Myth: Wukong review, is hoping for some kind of Discovery Mode.

DLC aside, the Bloomberg piece dips into the backstory of both companies: a much-publicised 2017 meeting between Wu and Apple bigwig Tim Cook, which didn’t really go anywhere; Game Science’s “four failures in a row”, including several free-to-play mobile games, prior to releasing Wukong; and the fact that even following Wukong’s success, with Game Science now worth “several billion yuan”, the 2000-person Hero Games team aren’t making a profit.

Hero Games sunk 60 million yuan ($8.5 million) into Game Science back in 2017. They aren’t profitable, it seems, partly because they’re still making their money back from previous Game Science flops, but Wu also notes that “this is the most gruesome year for China’s games industry ever,” with wider economic difficulties leading to cuts in entertainment spending and a number of cancellations.

One way to keep growing Wukong’s audience could be to make more of an appeal to overseas players – according to Game Developer, the vast majority of the launch sales came from China.

As ever with Hero Games, Wu declined to answer questions from Bloomberg about a notorious guidance document asking English-language Wukong streamers and video makers to avoid discussing “feminist propaganda”, Covid prevention measures, or Chinese government policy. In what a less generous soul might read as an exercise in telling on your creepy self, the (not legally binding) caution about “feminist propaganda” came in the wake of an extensive IGN report from last year that Game Science have a culture of sexism.

The developers and their partners have staunchly avoided the subject ever since. I asked a PR representative for Black Myth: Wukong about the streamer “Do’s and Don’ts” in August, and was told a week or two later that “unfortunately, we cannot provide a comment at this time”.