Game Science

Formation and early period (2014–2017)

Game Science was founded on 13 June 2014.^[3] The seven founding members were former Tencent employees who had worked as developers on the massively multiplayer online game Asura at the company.^[4]

At the time of Game Science's founding, China's mobile games market was expanding, so the studio pivoted toward mobile development to stay afloat.^[4] The studio developed the mobile game 100 Heroes in collaboration with the publisher NetEase.^[4] The game attracted 500 thousand players in its first month and nearly 800 thousand players in its first year.^[4] Yang Qi proposed developing a single-player game as the studio's next project, but the idea was shelved due to the high costs and risks involved for a newly established studio.^[4] Instead, the studio went on to develop the mobile game Art of War: Red Tides.^[4] In 2019, the game was acquired by the video game company Chaoxi Guangnian, a ByteDance subsidiary.^[5] During these early years, Lilith Games CEO Wang Xiwen introduced Game Science CEO Feng Ji (both were Tencent colleagues) and Hero Games CEO Daniel Wu to each other.^[4] The early connection led to Hero Games investing in Game Science.^[4]

From the outset, Game Science embraced a vision of creating games that personally move and resonate with its developers—a philosophy highlighted on the studio's official website.^[4] In a 2025 speech at the Black Myth: Wukong Art Exhibition in the CAA Art Museum, Feng Ji reaffirmed this as a core value of the studio.^[6] He said that projects advance most effectively when game developers, as players themselves, have a deep understanding of both the work and its audience, but underscored that developers ultimately only represent themselves and must therefore continuously experiment to find the intersection between themselves and players.^[6]

The studio's philosophy also reflects ideas expressed in Feng Ji's 2007 article Who Murdered Our Games? (谁谋杀了我们的游戏).^[7] This writing offers a critique from the perspective of a game planner, arguing that many games fail before they even leave the development stage, these failures occur when development teams lack excitement for the games they are creating, the industry has fostered a mentality where players are treated like livestock in the pursuit for engagement and profit, and the industry has a dark side characterized by capital-driven practices that alienate players and degrade their experiences.^[8] In a 2024 interview with China Central Television, Feng Ji elaborated that game developers should focus on gameplay and storytelling to captivate players but must remain cautious of capital-driven practices that are harmful, emphasizing that a reasonable standard is whether you would recommend a game that you made to your children, friends, and relatives with peace of mind.^[9]

Black Myth: Wukong (2018–present)

After the mobile games 100 Heroes and Art of War: Red Tides, Game Science started the development of Black Myth: Wukong in 2018.^[10] According to operations director Lan Weiyi, the shift toward AAA development came after the realization that Steam had more users from China than from the United States, indicating that China's premium games market was undergoing a transformation.^[10] Before the development of the game began, the studio conducted a company-wide survey that revealed that action role-playing games had the longest playtimes on Steam among the staff, which guided both the studio's broader focus and the Black Myth project's direction toward the genre.^[11] Feng Ji said that this approach would enable everyone to better understand and empathize with players, since they themselves would be players of the types of games they were creating.^[11] Game Science decided to maintain teams for both mobile and single-player games.^[12] However, as the development cycles between the two kinds of games are very different, Feng Ji and Yang Qi sought a new environment appropriate for a team that worked on single-player games.^[11] Ultimately, the Black Myth development team moved from Shenzhen to Hangzhou due to its "slower pace and lower living costs".^[13]

In August 2020, Game Science released the first trailer of Black Myth: Wukong as a way to recruit more talent for the company.^[14] At the time, the game's development team had about 30 members.^[14] Due to the trailer going viral, Game Science received over 10,000 resumes from domestic and foreign candidates.^[14] By the time of release, the team had grown to 140 members, as listed in the game's credits.^[13]

Hero Games acquired a 19% stake in Game Science through its wholly owned subsidiary Tianjin Hero Financial Holding Technology in 2017, but sold its shares in the studio in 2022 with payment partly outstanding as of 2024.^[13] As reported in 2021, Tencent obtained a 5% stake in the studio.^[15][16] The company aimed to help the studio on some projects, but committed to not interfering with the operation and decision-making of the studio.^[15][16] As reported in 2026, Tencent's registered stake in the studio rose from 5% to 24%, following the company's acquisition of Hero Games' shares in the studio as early as 2022.^[17] As a result, Tencent became the sole external investor in the studio.^[17]

In 2023, IGN released a report that alleged a history of sexism within the company, citing screenshots of personal posts by company figures in Chinese social media and suggestive hiring posters from 2015 as examples.^[18] Chinese-language outlets HK01, an online news portal, and GameLook, a game-industry research website, criticized IGN's report, arguing that the article uses examples taken out of context and vulgar but not sexist.^[19][20] HK01 and Gamebase reported that the relevant posts had been mistranslated.^[20][21] HK01 also reported that the criticism by anonymous commentators quoted in the article cannot be verified.^[20] Game Science declined to address questions about the allegations.^[22][23][24] On social media, Khee Hoon Chan, a co-author of the IGN article, called for online piracy and made explicit comments toward Game Science.^[25][26][27] Hero Games' Dino Ying commented that Game Science tries not to get into distractions.^[28]

Black Myth: Wukong was released in August 2024 and sold 20 million units in its first month.^[29] It was one of the fastest-selling games of all time.^[30]

In 2024, Game Science and the electric automobile maker BYD Company formed a strategic partnership to digitize China's national treasures and landmarks, aiming to support their protection and provide a scientific foundation for future restoration work.^[31][32] This involved 3D scanning in Shanxi, which was prominently featured in Black Myth: Wukong, and other provinces in China.^[31][32]