Wukong’ Blows Past Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077 Steam Records

At the time of this writing, Black Myth: Wukong has already become the fourth most concurrently played game in Steam history with 1,656,000 players at the moment. By the time I’m finished with this article, who knows.

The monster launch of Black Myth: Wukong is a surprise even for those expecting the game to do well, and the reason these numbers are this high is fairly obvious.

China.

While certainly many in the west will play Wukong themselves, it’s hard to overstate just how massive this game always was going to be in China among its population of 1.4 billion. Black Myth: Wukong is made by Chinese developer Game Science and inspired by a legendary Chinese novel, Journey to the West, written in the 16th century.

This is not including any other platforms, so the totals are no doubt much higher, but from Steam tracking alone, Black Myth: Wukong is now the most-played single-player game ever, surpassing both Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077. Here’s the all-time list as it stands right now. I’ve already had to change the number earlier in this post because it jumped another 40,000 by the time I reached this paragraph:

1. PUBG – 3.257 million players
2. Palword – 2.101 million players
3. Counter-Strike 2 – 1.818 million players
4. Black Myth: Wukong – 1.656 million players
5. Lost Ark – 1.325 million players
6. Dota 2 – 1.295 million players
7. Cyberpunk: 2077 – 1.054 million players
8. Elden Ring – 953,000 players
9. Banana – 917,000 players
10. New World – 913,634

I expect this will move past Counter-Strike 2 possibly soon, as it’s now 7 PM in China, prime gaming time. Palworld seems possible, and this may indeed hit #2. That would be double Cyberpunk and Elden Ring’s totals, not simply topping them.

Whether today is the peak or it gets an even higher surge on the weekend, that remains to be seen. This is a single player game and will not have a long tail, but this week will be and has already been crazy in terms of playercount and no doubt, sales, as this is a fully priced title unlike many of the other games on this list. Taking that into account, it would no doubt be #1 in copies sold on Steam, from the looks of it, at least in this initial time window.

Black Myth: Wukong arrived with a solid 82 on Metacritic from mostly Western outlets. There has been some measure of controversy about reported sexism at Game Science, and recently, an email was circulated to creators 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 has not put a dent in sales. Wukong has been hyped to an insane degree over there and we are now seeing the fruits of that here. It remains to be seen just how high this thing is going to go. From the time I started this article to finishing it, the game has already gotten 70,000 more concurrent players.

Update: Less than half an hour after I published this, Wukong has now passed Counter-Strike 2 with 1.880 million concurrent players.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.