Whether you see it as a AA or AAA title, Game Science’s Black Myth: Wukong was undeniably one of the few major releases that didn’t disappoint the gaming community in 2024, boasting solid sales numbers and high review scores on Steam and Metacritic.
However, the game’s critics often attributed its success to its home country, China, suggesting that without the country’s enormous population, Wukong wouldn’t be pulling in such substantial revenue or claiming the Players’ Voice Award at The Game Awards 2024. Recently, the game’s Art Director and Co-Founder of Game Science Yang Qi unintentionally addressed these critiques, revealing just how successful the action RPG would have been without factoring in the Chinese market.
Game Science
Speaking at the West Lake Art Forum held at the School of Animation and Games of the China Academy of Art, Yang mentioned that 30% of the game’s player base comes from outside China, a figure that surprised the team, considering international players might not be familiar with or feel connected to the cultural content of the game.
According to the developer, while players from abroad might not understand Wukong’s design of spaces, styles, stories, and performance, they can still appreciate the core content as long as the logic behind it is consistent and resonates with common experiences. “Familiarity and strangeness form a scale,” Yang explained, conforming to “the philosophy of The Doctrine of the Mean,” one of the Four Books of classical Chinese philosophy, whose central theme is that doing things impartially is the highest ethical standard.
30% and ancient philosophy are all well and good, but how does that translate to revenues? Let’s do the math: as per Niko Partners’ January 30 report, Black Myth: Wukong sold 25 million copies, and provided Yang’s information is correct, 30% of those sales, or 7.5 million copies, came from outside China.
Considering the game’s base price of $60 and, for the sake of argument, halving it to $30 to account for Steam fees, regional price adjustments, and other factors, those 7.5 million copies would rake in around $225 million. The resulting figure is enough to cover the game’s $70 million production budget (development and marketing included) three times over, proving that Black Myth: Wukong would still be a success even without Chinese players.
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