The first thing Mark Feng does every day after work is to plonk down at his home computer and fire up Black Myth: Wukong. That action-adventure game transforms the 29-year-old investor for a private equity fund in Beijing into Sun Wukong, aka the Monkey King from the 16th century Chinese novel “Journey to the West.” Feng wields the Jin Gu Bang, a legendary staff made of gold and iron, kills demons and gods alike, and often just can’t stop. “I play it until 2 in the morning,” he says.
Black Myth: Wukong, which is available in a range of languages including English, is the hottest selling single-player PC game and may become one of the most successful ever. Since its release on Aug. 20, it has surpassed industry blockbusters Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring in early sales by most measures and drawn praise from the world’s most famous game maniac, billionaire Elon Musk, who called the game “impressive” in a recent tweet. Musk included a photo of himself as the Monkey King.
The obscure Shenzhen-based studio Game Science is behind Black Myth: Wukong and Forbes estimates that the scrappy studio founded in 2014 has reached $1.8 billion in valuation, effectively joining the exclusive club of unicorns, startups valued over $1 billion. Founder Feng Ji, a 42-year-old self-confessed gaming addict and Game Science’s largest individual shareholder, has amassed a fortune of about $770 million derived from his own stake, Forbes estimates.
Black Myth: Wukong is on track to reach up to 35 million copies in sales this year alone, generating more than $1 billion in total revenues. That is more than enough to cover the estimated 400 million yuan ($56 million) used to develop the game, which took six years. Elden Ring, developed by Japan’s FromSoftware and winner of the prestigious Game of the Year award at the 2023 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, sold about 25 million copies since its release more than two years ago. Action game Grand Theft Auto, released more than a decade ago and one of the most popular franchises ever, has reportedly sold more than 200 million copies worldwide.
Game Science didn’t respond to repeated requests for an interview.
The company’s rise is all the more striking since Chinese officials have blamed the country’s $46 billion gaming industry for various social maladies such as addiction among youth. Chinese players also favor multi-player mobile games over single-player PC games, a tendency that led domestic gaming giants such as NetEase and Tencent to focus on products for smartphones, not PCs.
But Stan Zhao, a Shanghai-based analyst at research firm Blue Lotus Capital Advisors, says Chinese regulators have adjusted their stance on Black Myth: Wukong and given it “unprecedented support” because of its storyline based on “Journey to the West,” which itself was rooted in local folklore. They believe it can promote traditional Chinese culture abroad, he says. The official Xinhua News Agency recently described the game as a “significant leap onto the global stage.”
Plus, its fevered sales might boost consumption and help the country reach its 2024 economic growth target of about 5%, which is increasingly seen as out of reach. Aside from spending on the game itself, fans are visiting ancient temples and other sites featured in Black Myth: Wukong, sparking a rise in flight and hotel bookings. Last month, the Luckin Coffee chain featured the Monkey King on the packaging for an Americano coffee and it was so overwhelmed by orders that its system crashed.
“The success of Black Myth: Wukong is really due to a combination of factors,” says Cui Chenyu, a Shanghai-based senior research analyst at research and advisory firm Omdia. Its gameplay, people’s familiarity with the Monkey King and strong promotion at home all played roles, she says.
For Feng, success based on the Monkey King seems almost preordained. The entrepreneur, who according to local media reports skipped school to play games, once spent almost all his savings on Blizzard Entertainment’s mobile-based game World of Warcraft (WoW), in which players can pay to unlock new gameplay. Feng also gave up an opportunity to study for a master’s degree in biomedical engineering at China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology, where he already had a bachelor’s degree in a similar field.
Instead, he took a job in 2005 at a small gaming studio in the country’s tech hub, Shenzhen, which worked on mobile games similar to WoW, according to local media reports. Three years later he went to work for Tencent, leading the development of Asura, a mobile game based on the legends of the Monkey King.
Despite initial good reviews, that title flopped after players criticized it for what was considered exorbitant pricing of in-game purchases. Feng left Tencent with six of his former colleagues and founded Game Science in 2014.
The company developed two mobile games but neither took off. In a recent interview with Xinhua, Feng said his dream had always been making big-budget PC titles known as 3A or AAA games in industry jargon, with the triple As standing for “a lot of time,” “a lot of resources” and “a lot of money.”
In 2017, Hero Games, a Beijing-based games developer and publisher, paid 60 million yuan for a 20% stake, effectively becoming Game Science’s largest external shareholder. In 2021, the year the company put out a trailer for Black Myth: Wukong, Tencent invested an undisclosed amount for a 5% stake. Local media reports estimated the investment to be 350 million yuan.
Yet Feng isn’t without his controversial side. In 2020, he caused a backlash on social media for what was considered vulgar and sexually explicit comments about women. It was also recently revealed that Game Science included sexually explicit pictures in recruitment posters published in 2015. The studio, as well as its two investors, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Analysts say that despite Black Myth: Wukong’s success, Game Science still has a way to go before becoming a studio with global appeal. Charlie Chai, a Shanghai-based analyst at research firm 86Research, says the game owes no small part of its success to Chinese cultural legacy, and that is different from, say, Elden Ring, which is an original narrative and world. According to Omdia estimates, roughly 90% of purchases of Black Myth: Wukong on the Steam gaming distribution platform come from the Greater China area. Elden Ring, by comparison, depends on only about 20% of purchases from the region.
“Global competitiveness is limited,” says 86Research’s Chai. “The capabilities as revealed by the game still put the studio as second-to-third tier versus the established giants.”
Yet Chai agrees that Game Science has big potential. He and other analysts say that for one, the company could be leading a change in China’s massive gaming market, where more and more players are starting to embrace PC titles after trying Black Myth: Wukong. And Zeng Xiaofeng, a Shanghai-based senior analyst at research firm Niko Partners, says the game’s overseas sales will increase thanks to word-of-mouth reviews.
“It signals that Chinese studios are ready to compete directly with established Western and Japanese developers in the premium AAA space both domestically and overseas,” Zeng writes in an e-mailed note. “The broader implications of this success cannot be overlooked.”
