China’s AAA game Black Myth: Wukong tops Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring for most Steam players

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Black Myth: Wukong, China’s first AAA video game, has broken the record to become the most-played title of its kind on its first day of release on the digital games store Steam, marking a major milestone for the Chinese developers.

The action role-playing game, developed by the Tencent Holdings-backed studio Game Science and inspired by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, recorded 1.4 million concurrent players in the first three hours of its release, surpassing the world’s most popular single-player games that in recent years include hits such as Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3.

The rush to play the title, which spent six years in development, has made it No 4 on Steam’s chart for having the most concurrent players of all time, following PUBG: Battlegrounds, Palworld and Counter-Strike 2, according to the store’s real-time ranking on Tuesday.

People watch gameplay of Black Myth: Wukong at a store in Beijing on August 20, 2024, the day of its release. Photo: AFP

The biggest reason behind the popularity is China’s long absence from AAA games – an informal classification that refers to games from a mid-sized or major publisher that typically have higher development and marketing budgets – according to Zhang Shule, an analyst with CBJ Think Tank.

“As the world’s largest gaming market and [home to] the richest gaming company [Tencent], there were no products that were truly recognised as AAA games globally. This has become a pain in the hearts of Chinese game developers and players,” Zhang said. “This is also the reason why Black Myth: Wukong was so highly anticipated.”

Zhang previously predicted that the game would need to sell 5 million copies to be considered a well-performing domestic AAA title, but raised his forecast amid its tremendous popularity. “Now I have reason to believe that this game will have a chance to reach 10 million [in sales volume],” he said.

In comparison, Cyberpunk 2077, released by Polish game developer CD Projekt in December 2020, had sold 25 million copies by October 2023. Elden Ring, from Japan’s FromSoftware, reached the same sales volume by June this year after its February 2022 launch.

As the game became available to players at 10am Tuesday, China time, nearly 1,000 live-streaming sessions were set up on the Chinese video-streaming platform Bilibili, where people played the game live or discussed their initial impressions of the game.

Qian Xuecheng, a 30-year-old gamer in Shanghai who has been playing single-player titles for a decade, explained how he took a day off from work – his first leave of the year – just so he could start the game as soon as it was released.

“I’ve been waiting for Wukong for so long,” said Qian, adding that the game’s quality was beyond his expectations.

“Good graphics, good character design, good battle scenes. Although it might be a bit too difficult for fresh players who have not tried any Souls-like games,” he said, referring to the subgenre of action role-playing games named after FromSoftware’s Souls franchise and known for their high difficulty level dark fantasy settings.

Feng Ji, founder and CEO of Game Science, said in a Weibo post on Tuesday that his team aimed to make the game playable for both fresh and experienced gamers.

“In the last year before release, the most-discussed topic between me and the designers was how to increase the flexibility and tolerance of the game’s difficulty,” said Feng, who was a game designer at Tencent before starting his own company.

In addition to a number of brand tie-ins, the studio’s investors have stepped up efforts to promote the game for its release.
Beijing-based Hero Games, an early investor and joint distributor of Black Myth: Wukong, put up huge posters of the Monkey King at a 20,000-square-metre complex – a project initiated by the company’s founder Dino Ying – in the heart of Shanghai on Tuesday, along with music events about the game staged to host excited players.

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