The man who directed the original Drunken Master in 1978 — and in doing so invented the cinematic form of drunken boxing that made Jackie Chan a global star — is now shaping combat in a wuxia game that has reached 100 million players. Everstone Studio and NetEase Games announced on August 26 that the game has surpassed 100 million players and that Yuen Woo-ping, born in 1945, the Hong Kong martial arts choreographer and director behind The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, and Kung Fu Hustle, has joined Where Winds Meet as Global Action Consultant. His Yuen Clan — the martial arts family that has shaped Hong Kong action cinema for decades — will contribute through motion capture, encoding their physical tradition directly into the game’s animation data.

Alongside the hire, the studio confirmed that Hidden Mountain Chapter 3, the finale of the arc that has defined the game’s 2.0 era, will launch on September 16. A new martial arts style, Bamboo Cut – Draught, rooted in the drunken fist tradition Yuen helped define on screen, will arrive on September 3.

Who Reaches 100 Million — and How the Number Was Counted

Where Winds Meet first launched in China in December 2024. The global PC and PS5 release followed on November 14, 2025; iOS and Android joined on December 12; Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud were added on June 8, 2026. At the time of the Xbox launch, NetEase announced the game had surpassed 80 million cumulative players. The announcement at Gamescom 2026 brought that figure to 100 million — a gain of 20 million in approximately two and a half months.

One caveat worth noting: NetEase did not specify the calculation methodology, time period, or platform breakdown for the 100 million figure, nor did the company clarify whether it represents monthly active users or a cumulative total. The figure is a cumulative total across the Chinese launch and all subsequent global platforms — not a concurrent player count. Publishing head Eric, who represents the game’s public face in official communications, acknowledged the milestone this way: “Reaching 100 million players across the globe is a dream come true for our entire team, and we are deeply grateful to every wanderer who has embarked on this journey with us.”

What Is Drunken Boxing — and Why the Hire Is Not Cosmetic

The martial arts style arriving September 3, Bamboo Cut – Draught, is built on zui quan (醉拳) — drunken boxing, or drunken fist. The style does not involve actual intoxication; practitioners deliberately imitate the staggering, sway, and unpredictable weight transfers of a drunk person to confuse opponents and mask genuine attack intent. The irregular footwork breaks the patterns that other fighting styles train opponents to read. Zui quan is rooted in Shaolin and Daoist traditions, and it is considered among the most demanding wushu forms to perform — requiring powerful joints, extreme body flexibility, and the ability to execute precise strikes while appearing entirely uncoordinated.

Yuen Woo-ping is not a celebrity consultant with a general knowledge of the style. He is the person who created its modern cinematic form. His 1978 film Drunken Master — the film that launched Jackie Chan to international fame and that Where Winds Meet‘s new style draws direct inspiration from — defined how drunken boxing looks on screen for generations of audiences and filmmakers. Born in Guangzhou in 1945, trained in Peking opera and Chinese martial arts by his father Yuen Siu-tien (who appeared in Drunken Master himself as the alcoholic master Beggar So), Yuen Woo-ping went on to choreograph action for The Matrix trilogy, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill volumes one and two, Kung Fu Hustle, and The Grandmaster, earning multiple Best Action Choreography awards at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards.

He served as action choreographer on The Matrix, the most influential Western film to import Hong Kong wire-fu aesthetics into Hollywood — a film whose premise (a simulated reality indistinguishable from the real world) made it, alongside Yuen’s choreography, one of cinema’s lasting explorations of the boundary between the physical and the digital.

This is where the Yuen Clan motion capture involvement becomes the technical significance of the hire. The Clan — comprising Yuen Woo-ping’s siblings and trained collaborators, all children of Yuen Siu-tien — will perform the motion capture from which the Bamboo Cut – Draught animations are derived. What players perform in-game will have been literally performed first by the people who trained in the lineage that created drunken boxing’s screen tradition.

An RPGamer preview of the style at Gamescom described the Bamboo Cut Draught animation quality as “quite impressive, with clear attention to detail and impressive enemy AI responses to the confusing moves” — noting that the game’s enemy behavior was updated to adapt to the style’s intentional unpredictability.

The Bamboo Cut – Draught style arrives September 3. The Stephen Tung Wai prior collaboration preceded this one — Tung Wai is a director and choreographer known for his work with John Woo.

What Is Where Winds Meet

Where Winds Meet is a free-to-play open-world action RPG developed by Everstone Studio and published by NetEase Games. Set in 10th-century China during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period — an era when entire dynasties could collapse within a single reign — the game casts players as a young wanderer, a youxia in the wuxia tradition: a martial artist with no fixed allegiance, defined by their skill, their choices, and their code. The Where Winds Meet game description notes that the world contains more than 10,000 unique NPCs who respond to player choices, turning neutral figures into allies or enemies. Players can become a hero of the jianghu — the martial world’s parallel social underworld — or an agent of chaos; the game responds accordingly.

The protagonist’s story is a revenge and identity journey. Blissful Retreat, the community that was home, was burned to the ground by an enemy called Qianye (named Chen Yi in some sources). Family and friends were taken in the attack. Everything since has been movement toward the confrontation that Hidden Mountain Chapter 3 will finally deliver — the first meeting since the fire. Hidden Mountain’s setting is an “Eastern Steampunk” civilization of ancient engineers concealed in fog-shrouded mountain peaks, where philosophical factions argue over whether advanced knowledge belongs to everyone (the Mohist tradition the expansion draws from) or only to those who possess it.

The game is available at no cost on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Android, and iOS.

Hidden Mountain Chapter 3: The Confrontation Arrives September 16

Chapter 3, titled Companion Above the Clouds, launches September 16. It brings the Hidden Mountain storyline to its conclusion: outsiders arrive, buried secrets surface, and rival factions face their final choices. Players will shape how the saga ends.

The chapter delivers the confrontation with Qianye — the antagonist who burned Blissful Retreat and whose actions launched the entire protagonist journey. Chapter 3 introduces Chapter 3 Companion Above Clouds — two special bosses, two open-world field bosses, and a range of new gameplay activities alongside the story’s climax. Players can try a hands-on demo of Chapter 3 at Gamescom (Cologne, August 26–30, Hall 7.1, Booth B-050).

Bamboo Cut – Draught: Drunken Boxing, September 3

The Bamboo Cut – Draught martial arts set arrives September 3. Inspired by the 1978 film Drunken Master and developed through the Yuen Woo-ping collaboration, it features heavy impact, loose movement, and unpredictable strikes — hallmarks of zui quan. Players will swig alcohol from a container as part of the style’s special move animations, consistent with the theatrical tradition the style draws from. The style’s power comes from its illegibility: an opponent trained to read intent from posture encounters a fighter whose every movement signals something other than what follows.

Extraction Mode and Ghost Month

A new Extraction Mode in development is coming to Where Winds Meet, bringing a Wuxia-specific take on the extraction genre. Players can fight head-on, hide in the environment, use disguises, or loot treasure without drawing a weapon. Detailed release timing has not been confirmed.

The Ghost Month special event is currently live, weaving traditional Chinese folk culture, taboo legends, and supernatural horror into the Jianghu setting. Ghost Month 2026 runs through September 10.

The game has received a Gamescom Awards Best Mobile nomination for Best Mobile Game at the Gamescom Awards 2026.

What Players Should Know About NetEase and Data Privacy

Where Winds Meet is published by NetEase Games, a division of NetEase, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTES; HKEX: 9999), headquartered in Hangzhou, China. As a company domiciled in the People’s Republic of China, NetEase is legally subject to China National Intelligence Law Article 7 (2017), whose Article 7 requires that “all organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law.” This legal obligation applies to NetEase regardless of where its servers are physically located or what its privacy policy states. The Data Security Law and Cybersecurity Law (2021) and Cybersecurity Law (as amended) create additional government data access frameworks.

The game collects standard online game data: account information, gameplay behavior, device identifiers, and payment data through in-game purchases. No independent third-party security audit of Where Winds Meet‘s specific data transmission practices has been published. Players who are concerned about the structural legal risk of using a PRC-domiciled online service should understand that this risk is a fixed condition of Chinese law — it cannot be fully mitigated by in-game privacy settings.

For players who are comfortable with this framework, Where Winds Meet is a free-to-play title that has attracted 100 million players across nine months of global availability, with consistent content updates and now the martial arts industry’s most prestigious action-choreography tradition directly contributing to its combat design. The game’s performance gap versus Western open-world competitors is real: documentation, third-party tooling, and customer support in English remain thinner than for a Western-published equivalent, and the studio’s primary creative direction reflects Chinese historical aesthetics and storytelling conventions that may require orientation for Western players unfamiliar with wuxia.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does Hidden Mountain Chapter 3 launch, and what does it deliver?

Hidden Mountain Chapter 3 — titled Companion Above the Clouds — launches on September 16 on all platforms. It is the finale of the Hidden Mountain storyline: players will face Qianye, the antagonist responsible for the fire at Blissful Retreat that launched the protagonist’s entire journey. The chapter brings two special bosses, two open-world field bosses, new gameplay activities, and player choices that shape how the Hidden Mountain saga ends.

Who is Yuen Woo-ping, and what does his hire actually mean for the game?

Yuen Woo-ping, born in Guangzhou in 1945, is the Hong Kong director and martial arts choreographer who created the cinematic form of drunken boxing with his 1978 film Drunken Master — the film that launched Jackie Chan’s career. He later choreographed The Matrix trilogy, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, and Kung Fu Hustle. He is now Global Action Consultant for Where Winds Meet, and his Yuen Clan will perform the motion capture for the game’s new Bamboo Cut – Draught style. The practical implication: the game’s drunken boxing animations will be derived from the physical performances of people trained in the lineage that created drunken boxing’s cinematic form — not from a generic approximation.

What is drunken boxing, and why is it considered so difficult to perform?

Drunken boxing (zui quan, 醉拳) is a Chinese martial arts style in which practitioners deliberately imitate the staggering, swaying, and unpredictable movements of an intoxicated person — without being intoxicated. The point is to confuse opponents by making genuine attack intent unreadable. Zui quan is considered one of the most demanding wushu styles to learn because it requires powerful joints, extreme whole-body flexibility, and the ability to execute precise strikes from apparently chaotic positions. It draws from both Shaolin (Buddhist) and Eight Immortals (Daoist) traditions and was first referenced in the Ming dynasty novel “Water Margin.”

Is Where Winds Meet safe to play given that NetEase is a Chinese company?

Where Winds Meet is a well-received free-to-play game that has attracted 100 million players globally. However, NetEase is a PRC-domiciled company subject to China’s National Intelligence Law (2017), which legally requires all Chinese organizations to cooperate with government intelligence requests on demand. This obligation cannot be waived by the company’s privacy policy or the physical location of its servers. No independent security audit of the game’s specific data practices has been published. Players who are concerned about structural government-data-access risk should factor this into their decision. Players comfortable with that framework will find a genuinely ambitious and content-rich open-world wuxia game.