Wuchang: Fallen Feathersis the latest big premium single-player game out of China after the runaway success ofBlack Myth: Wukong, but though developer Lenzeefelt that Wukong had proven “it was the right decision to start Wuchang”, Wuchang hasn’t yet managed to emulate its success.
There are a few reasons for this. The game had a bad launch, garnering an Overwhelmingly Negative rating on Steam because ofperformance issues and poor optimisation, leading the developer to“sincerely apologise”to its players and offer items as compensation alongside releasing fixes for crashing issues, frame rate improvements, and more. While Wuchang’s Steam rating has now risen to Mixed,it’s lost a huge amount of players, likely due to bad word of mouth or people waiting for more fixes before diving back in.
There are, of course, other issues. Review scores have been middling, with critics and players additionally reportingpoor combat design, bad English translations, inconsistent level design, formulaic storytelling, and rarely innovating on the Soulslike genre it draws from.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Is Big On Fan Service
None of this is what I’m particularly interested in, though. Poorly optimised, buggy games are par for the course nowadays, and while it’s very annoying and anti-consumer for studios to be launching games that clearly aren’t ready to be launched, I’m more interested in Wuchang’s marketing.
When the game was first revealed in 2021, it gota lot of flak from Redditorswho compared it unfavourably to Dark Souls, and rightly so. Detractors said that the game seemed to have lifted animations, assets, and sound effects out of FromSoftware’s games, calling it a “shameless clone” and a “rip-off”.
We’re now in 2025, and the culture has shifted. Lenzee’s focus, or at least its marketing focus, shifted along with it. It’s not a stretch to say that last year’sStellar Bladehad a big impact on the gaming industry. The game’s protagonist, Eve,was curvy and provocatively dressed, leading some players to cry thatthisis what all games should be, and that Western game studios intentionally make their female characters less attractive because they, for some reason, hate their audiences.
Shift Up, Stellar Blade’s developer, took notice, and geared much of its marketing towardsemphasising Eve’s looks and body. The game’s Twitter page is mostly pictures of Eve – in her underwear, in jackets that cover nearly nothing, videos of her climbing ladders thatshowcase the game’s jiggle physics. Clearly, its strategy worked,since the game was a massive success.
It feels like Lenzee saw Stellar Blade’s success and decided to capitalise on the same sort of marketing. Journalists and players alike have pointed out that just like Stellar Blade, Wuchang is ‘gooner bait’. Asour reviewer Joshua Robertson noted, Wuchang has many armor sets that are incredibly skimpy, and its intention of telling a “serious story” runs counter to its desire to provide fanservice. In Joshua’s words, “It’s extremely distasteful to depict women going through untold horrors, only for you to find multiple armor sets that let you run around in their underwear.”
Fan Service Shouldn’t Be A Way To Differentiate Mediocre Games
Games that come out of Asia are no stranger to fan service. Plenty of games, especially in the free-to-play space, have built massive businesses catering to the desires of fans who want to see sexualised content. Stellar Blade, a Korean game, is one core example of how as Asia’s developers move towards creating single-player, premium games, they hold on to the tactics that have made them money in the past.
Japanese games often have fan service too (most prominentlyNier Automata) as do plenty of manga and anime (Food Wars, or Shokugeki No Soma, is my personal favourite offender), but these elements have historically been toned down for Western audiences to comply with obscenity laws and to account for cultural differences.
Wuchang is just another example of pivoting to fan service to boost interest in a game that otherwise faces criticism for not doing anything all that new. I’vewritten previouslythat modern, prominent games coming out of Asia feel highly derivative of things that have been done before and don’t attempt big swings – another example of replicating what already makes money.
Fan service can’t make up for a lack of originality. It boosts sales, but it doesn’t boost the creative value of a game. I’m not praying on any one studio’s downfall, but I don’t love that fan service is increasingly seen as a thing you can hinge your game’s marketing plan on. If studios want their games to be taken seriously, is shoring up a lack of ideas with a few sets of wearable underwear really the right solution?
