No sooner had the fantasy action role-playing game Black Myth: Wukong from the Chinese studio Game Science debuted on Steam than it began to set popularity records for single-player games.
Image source: Steam (LVVrunner)
Let us remind you that Black Myth: Wukong launched on the Steam service early in the morning (5:00 Moscow time) on August 20. After just four hours, peak online play on the site has already exceeded 1.443 million people.
This figure is a record for single-player games and the fourth in Steam history: PUBG: Battlegrounds (3.257 million), Palworld (2.101 million) and Counter-Strike 2 (1.818 million) are still ahead.
On its way to 1.443 million concurrent players, Black Myth: Wukong was ahead of such hits as Dota 2 (1.295 million) and Cyberpunk 2077 (1.054 million). CD Projekt Red’s action movie has been the record holder among single-player projects for the last three and a half years.
In the first hours after release, Black Myth: Wukong received more than 13.8 thousand “very positive” reviews on Steam (92% rating). The lion’s share of these reviews appear to be written by Chinese players.
Users praise high-quality graphics and optimization, plot, bosses and the lack of monetization typical of Western games, but complain about technical problems (bugs, crashes) and camera behavior.
Black Myth: Wukong was released on PC (Steam, EGS, WePlay) and PS5, but the version for Xbox Series X and S is delayed. The game was created based on the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West.” Critics called the project an excellent action film.