The triple-A game masterpiece "Black Myth: Wukong", which is popular all over the Internet, is expected to be launched on August 20, 2024. Market analysis shows that the pre-sale performance of "Black Myth: Wukong" exceeded expectations, with sales reaching 1.2 million copies and nearly 400 million yuan in sales within a month.

According to Valve's latest weekly sales list on Steam (August 6-13, 2024), Black Myth: Wukong pre-orders ranked No. 1 in the world (excluding free game content and SteamDeck).

Game Science became one of the world's top game developers

On the evening of the 17th, "Black Myth: Wukong" ushered in the lifting of the ban on media ratings. As of Saturday morning, 52 global media outlets gave an average rating of 82.

IGN China reviewers said that "Black Myth: Wukong" can definitely be said to be a milestone in the Chinese game industry, and the excellent quality it presents is worthy of all the expectations it has carried in the past four years, which is a domestic game that is also very competitive in the global market in the real sense, and I believe it will become a strong contender for this year's game of the year, and Game Science will undoubtedly become one of the world's top ARPG game developers after this battle.

In 2014, Feng Ji, who was dissatisfied with the atmosphere of the game industry at that time, left Tencent with several old colleagues of God of War and founded a game science company in Shenzhen in order to realize his pursuit of high-quality games.

In May 2017, Hero Interactive Entertainment (now known as "Hero Games"), the publisher of "Art of War: Red Tide", brought 60 million yuan of investment to Game Science Company, and Hero Financial Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hero Interactive Entertainment, became a shareholder of Game Science Company, holding 20% of the shares. According to this calculation, the valuation of Game Science Company at that time was 300 million yuan.

In 2018, in a late-night meeting, Feng Ji and his team decided to go all out to make a single-player action game, codenamed "B1", that is, "Black." The abbreviation of "Myth One", which means "the first work of the Black Myth series" in Chinese, is now "Black Myth: Wukong".

Feng Ji set extremely high standards for this game, and he asked the team not only to avoid copying the gameplay of classic games, but also to achieve a comprehensive breakthrough in terms of graphics, plot, and gameplay.

Game Science Company received investment from Tencent

In March 2021, Guangxi Tencent Venture Capital Co., Ltd. acquired a 5% stake in Game Science through a capital increase, and the investment amount was not publicly disclosed.

However, comparing the changes in the assets of game science companies before and after receiving Tencent's investment, it can be found that their total assets and net assets have increased significantly from 40.4137 million yuan and 15.6192 million yuan at the end of December 2020 to 298 million yuan and 270 million yuan at the end of June 2021, which means that Tencent's investment in game science companies is likely to exceed 200 million yuan, and according to this calculation, the valuation of game science companies may exceed 4 billion yuan.

In this investment, Tencent promised the "three noes" principle of not interfering in business decision-making, not preempting project dominance, and not seeking issuance and operation, "The main purpose is to help old colleagues make the project smoothly, and will not deliberately pursue any commercial returns." ”

In addition, to ensure that the game provides a smooth and high-quality visual experience on different hardware platforms, Black Myth: Wukong was developed using Unreal Engine 5. Tencent's investment in Epic, which was launched in 2012, has a number of projects developed using Unreal Engine, which will likely provide more technical support to game science companies.

"The path we have chosen is not easy to take, so we have always been serious about those who agree with our values and are willing to help us realize our dreams, whether it is people, technology or capital, we will carry out serious contact and conditional acceptance under the premise of insisting on independence." Feng Ji said.

In the following 2022, Hero Mutual Entertainment sold all 19% of the shares of Game Science Company held by its subsidiary for a transaction amount of 480 million yuan. According to this calculation, the valuation of Game Science Company is more than 2.5 billion yuan.

Can investors seize the opportunity?

Judging from the current market reaction, "Black Myth: Wukong" has undoubtedly become a high-profile phenomenal game.

Although the direct economic benefits of Black Myth: Wukong are mainly concentrated in the hands of developers, its positive impact on related concept stocks is already being felt in the stock market. The recent performance of the stock market has been relatively weak, and the appearance of "Black Myth: Wukong" has undoubtedly lit a fire for the market and become the focus of investors' attention.

If you want to dig deeper into the opportunities that this game can bring, you can consider for example, the publisher of this game, the hardware equipment required to run this game, etc., take the initiative to "attack" to seek a breakthrough, and after in-depth research, whether you can find some investment opportunities.

After two 10-year years of technological innovation in PC & Internet and smart phone & mobile Internet, the game field has actually shown a new look, which also requires investors to maintain an understanding of the industry and follow the pace of the times. If the quality meets user expectations after launch, it may explode again, so it is also recommended that investors who often invest in game concept stocks can maintain a long-term focus on this game.