Editorial policy

ZhongKui.Today is designed around a simple rule: readers should be able to tell what a claim is, where it came from, and how certain it is.

Evidence levels

Official — Published by Game Science, the verified Black Myth accounts, a platform holder carrying an official asset, or another clearly identified primary source.

Shown In-Game — Directly visible in authenticated gameplay material. A visual observation does not automatically explain story meaning or final launch behavior.

Strong Inference — A conclusion supported by several concrete signals, but not stated by an official source. The supporting chain must be shown.

Interpretation — Editorial analysis, cultural reading, translation choice, or comparison. It must not be written as a confirmed game fact.

Rumor — A circulating claim that lacks adequate primary-source confirmation. Inclusion is for verification or debunking, not amplification.

Debunked — A claim contradicted by a primary source or by decisive evidence. The reason and source should remain visible.

Source order

We look first for the official project website and verified Black Myth accounts. Platform-holder pages, first-party interviews, and original regulatory or storefront records follow. Secondary reporting can help discover a claim, but it does not replace the originating evidence when that evidence is available.

Chinese-language material is read in the original where possible. Official English terminology takes priority. When no official English exists, an editor-reviewed translation is used and significant ambiguity is disclosed.

Human review and AI

News automation may discover entries from an allowlisted official YouTube Atom feed, import an editor-supplied allowlisted URL, remove duplicates, and prepare a rights-safe candidate record or bilingual translation worksheet. Those files are internal review material. They may not create a public article, commit to the publication branch, deploy the site, or send a Newsletter.

The video index is narrower. It may read minimal public metadata from verified Black Myth accounts and directly relevant Bilibili or YouTube community listings, apply duration, audience, topic, exclusion, and duplicate filters, and update the link-only catalogue. Official releases and community interpretation are labelled separately. Inclusion is not an endorsement or fact check. The index does not copy video files, thumbnails, subtitles, comments, or descriptions, and it does not turn a community title into a News claim.

A human editor must open the source, classify every material claim, review the original Chinese meaning where relevant, complete the English edit, check rights for every intended use, and explicitly promote approved material into the site’s News collection. URL, external-ID, or content-hash matches remain duplicates rather than additional stories.

AI-generated text is not treated as a source. AI-generated imagery, if ever tested, will be labeled and will not imitate official game assets or living artists.

Images and rights records

Every intended asset use should record its owner or creator, originating URL or file, licence or other rights basis, intended channel, credit, transformation, reviewer, decision, and review date. An editorial-page decision does not automatically permit use as a Newsletter cover, advertisement, downloadable guide, paid product, or merchandise.

Material marked unknown, documentation needed, review required, or rights hold is not eligible for a new publication. Existing official images remain owned by Game Science; official video is embedded or linked rather than re-uploaded. A museum page’s public-domain statement is recorded and rechecked for the particular object and intended use.

Corrections

Material factual changes include an updated verification date and a clear revision note on the affected entry. A correction record keeps the affected claim or asset, source review, decision, public note, commit, production URL, completion time, and any Newsletter, sitemap, or cache follow-up. Rights complaints may require the disputed asset to be removed while the claim is reviewed. Quiet edits are reserved for spelling, grammar, and formatting that do not change meaning.

The site does not currently publish an on-site correction form or a verified corrections email address. A public channel will only be listed after receipt, monitoring, reply, recordkeeping, and privacy handling have been tested. Until then, the editorial desk corrects issues found through proactive review without claiming that an external submission channel exists.

The public Substack archive contains an older issue that predates this policy. Its factual claims, source chain, translations, and images are being reviewed before it is promoted again, corrected, rewritten, annotated, or removed. The existence of that issue is not evidence that a current Newsletter draft has been reviewed or sent.

Commercial separation

The site currently carries no affiliate links, sponsorships, paid recommendations, or paid research. If that changes, the commercial relationship will be disclosed close to the relevant recommendation or offer. Payment will not change evidence labels or editorial conclusions.