Black Myth: Wukong
At the time of writing, Black Myth: Wukong is already the fourth most concurrently played game in Steam history, with 1,656,000 players currently. Who knows when I’ll be finished with this article.
The monster launch of Black Myth: Wukong is a surprise even for those who expected the game to be a success. The reason for these numbers is The high is pretty obvious.
China.
While many in the West will play Wukong itself, it’s hard to overstate how big this game would be in China among its 1.4 billion-strong population. Developed by Chinese developer Game Science, Black Myth: Wukong is inspired by a legendary Chinese novel written in the 16th century: Journey to the West.
This doesn’t include any other platforms, so the total numbers are no doubt much higher, but according to Steam tracking alone, Black Myth: Wukong is now the most played single-player game of all time, overtaking both Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077. Here’s the all-time list as it currently stands. I had to change the number earlier in this post because it had gone up another 40,000 by the time I reached this paragraph:
- PUBG – 3.257 million players
- Palword – 2.101 million players
- Counter-Strike 2 – 1.818 million players
- Black Myth: Wukong – 1.656 million players
- Lost Ark – 1.325 million players
- Dota 2 – 1.295 million players
- Cyberpunk: 2077 – 1.054 million players
- Elden Ring – 953,000 players
- Banana – 917,000 players
- New World – 913,634
I expect it may overtake Counter-Strike 2 soon, as it’s now 7pm in China, the best time to play. Palworld seems possible, and that could actually reach number 2. That would be double the totals of Cyberpunk and Elden Ring, not just more.
Wukong
Whether today is the peak or there’s more over the weekend remains to be seen. This is a single player game and won’t have a long curve, but this week will be and has been crazy in terms of player count and no doubt sales too as this is a full priced title unlike many other games on this list. Taking that into account, by the looks of things it would undoubtedly be #1 in copies sold on Steam at least in this initial window.
Black Myth: Wukong scored a solid 82 on Metacritic, mostly from Western media. There has been some controversy over reported sexism at Game Science, and an email was recently sent to the developers asking them not to talk about COVID-19, Chinese industry policies, or “feminist propaganda” in exchange for a free code.
Of course, none of this matters in China and hasn’t hurt sales. Wukong was hyped up there and now we’re seeing the fruits of that here. It remains to be seen how high this thing will go. From the time I started this article to the time it was finished, the game has already gained 70,000 additional concurrent players.
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Get my science fiction novels the Herokiller series And The Earthborn Trilogy.
