Black Myth: Wukong hasn’t been out a week, but it’s already breaking sales records by not only selling millions of copies in just a few days, but becoming one of the fastest-selling games of all time, according to one analyst.
Developer Game Science revealed Friday that the game had sold 10 million copies across all platforms, with a peak of 3 million concurrent players. This lines up with data on third-party Steam tracking sites like SteamDB, which show that the game peaked at 2.4 million concurrent players on Thursday, which was just two days after release. It’s still up above 2 million players at the time of this writing.
Black Myth: Wukong has sold 10 million copies across all platforms.
(Data as of 21:00 Beijing time, August 23, 2024)Thanks to all players worldwide for your support and love.
Have a great gaming weekend!#BlackMythWukong pic.twitter.com/mp3mk9JxrX— Black Myth: Wukong (@BlackMythGame) August 23, 2024
Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad wrote on X that this success makes Wukong “one of the fastest-selling games of all time, surpassing Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy in the same time frame.” In terms of concurrent players, it’s only been surpassed by PUBG, which peaked at 3.2 million players on Steam around six years ago.
You can attribute its success to a lot of factors — its stunning visual style due in part to the use of Unreal Engine 5, its soulslike gameplay — but according to Ahmad, it goes back to how it spread throughout China. Game Science is a Chinese studio backed by Tencent, and the game is based on Journey to the West, one of the most famous Chinese novels of all time.
“The high-end graphics, transformational (literally) gameplay, and cultural connection resonated strongly with Chinese gamers,” Ahmad wrote in a blog post.
More importantly, Wukong shows that Chinese developers are ready to compete with the Western video game industry, and that player preferences are changing. In 2014, Niko Partners found that most player spending was on mobile. By 2024, the country had overturned its console ban and in 2021, Valve launched an international version of Steam.
“Black Myth: Wukong is more than just a one-off success story — it represents the growing capabilities and ambitions of Chinese game development studios and their ability to compete on the global stage,” Ahmad writes.
Plus, Chinese players want bigger blockbuster experiences, and Wukong seems like a great example of one that can hit every checkbox. There haven’t been a lot of big AAA game releases this year either, so despite accusations of sexism and its long development time, it appeals to players outside of China as well. Jacqueline Burgess wrote in The Conversation that “until now, video games have been an untapped soft power resource in China. But the rise of Black Myth: Wukong suggests this is going to change.”
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