Despite only having launched in the past day, Black Myth: Wukong has taken off like a bat out of hell, shattering expectations and propelling it into the limelight in a way that most (Western) audiences did not anticipate. Having first been shown off to the public four years ago, the hype surrounding developer Game Science’s ambitious project has waxed and waned leading up to the release, but all signs indicate that the team has stuck the landing.
With a slew of positive review scores and incredibly impressive visuals (assuming you have some powerful hardware to run it on), Black Myth: Wukong‘s success is by no means out of left field, but what’s surprising to many is how quickly the game took off on PC. As detailed on SteamDB, the game’s seen a massive number of players on launch day. What’s more mindboggling is its concurrent user count (CCU); at the time of writing, Black Myth: Wukong has hit a peak CCU of over 2 million (2,223,179, to be exact). This is, to put it mildly, unprecedented for a single-player game, especially when you look at how it stacks up against the competition.
Looking at how other games have performed on Steam, there have only been six other titles that have managed to break a peak CCU of over 1 million, and of those six, only one of them (CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077) is a single-player title, with the rest being multiplayer-focused. To put it in perspective, even Elden Ring couldn’t break the 1 million mark. Pretty crazy, huh?
Of course, this has left some wondering if Black Myth: Wukong has a shot of taking the top spot. Currently, that coveted ranking is held by PUBG: Battlegrounds, which hit an all-time peak of 3,257,248 players back in 2018; mind you, at the time, PUBG was still a premium title, only moving to become free-to-play a couple of years ago. If we were to put money on it, it’s pretty unlikely that Black Myth: Wukong will be able to dethrone PUBG. Most single-player games almost always tend to hit their highest CCU at launch and quickly drop off after, with small spikes coinciding with sales and discounts down the line.
For those still baffled as to how Black Myth: Wukong has seemingly come out of left field, it’s worth noting that much of its success (on PC, at least) seems to be coming from abroad. As reported by Game Discover’s Simon Carless, current estimates indicate that around 88% of players hail from China, with a mere 3% residing in the USA.
