On the time of this writing, Black Fantasy: Wukong has already change into the fourth most concurrently performed sport in Steam historical past with 2.215 million gamers in the meanwhile. By the point I’m completed with this text, who is aware of.

The monster launch of Black Fantasy: Wukong is a shock even for these anticipating the sport to do properly, and the explanation these numbers are this excessive is pretty apparent.

China.

Whereas definitely many within the west will play Wukong themselves, it’s arduous to overstate simply how large this sport all the time was going to be in China amongst its inhabitants of 1.4 billion. Black Fantasy: Wukong is made by Chinese language developer Sport Science and impressed by a legendary Chinese language novel, Journey to the West, written within the sixteenth century.

This isn’t together with another platforms, so the totals are little question a lot greater, however from Steam monitoring alone, Black Fantasy: Wukong is now the most-played single-player sport ever, surpassing each Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077. Right here’s the all-time record because it stands proper now. I’ve already needed to change the quantity earlier on this put up as a result of it jumped one other 600,000 by the point I’m circling again to this text a couple of hours later.:

1. PUBG – 3.257 million gamers
2. Black Fantasy: Wukong – 2.215 million gamers
3. Palword – 2.101 million gamers
4. Counter-Strike 2 – 1.818 million gamers
5. Misplaced Ark – 1.325 million gamers
6. Dota 2 – 1.295 million gamers
7. Cyberpunk: 2077 – 1.054 million gamers
8. Elden Ring – 953,000 gamers
9. Banana – 917,000 gamers
10. New World – 913,634

I anticipate this may transfer previous Counter-Strike 2 presumably quickly, because it’s now 7 PM in China, prime gaming time. Palworld appears potential, and this will certainly hit #2. (Replace: it did). That will be double Cyberpunk and Elden Ring’s totals, not merely topping them.

Whether or not at the moment is the height or it will get a fair greater surge on the weekend, that continues to be to be seen. It is a single participant sport and won’t have an extended tail, however this week can be and has already been loopy by way of playercount and little question, gross sales, as this can be a absolutely priced title not like lots of the different video games on this record. Taking that into consideration, it will little question be #1 in copies bought on Steam, from the seems of it, not less than on this preliminary time window.

Black Fantasy: Wukong arrived with a stable 82 on Metacritic from principally Western retailers. There was some measure of controversy about reported sexism at Sport Science, and lately, an electronic mail was circulated to creators asking them to not speak about COVID-19, Chinese language business insurance policies or “feminist propaganda” in alternate for a free code.

In fact none of this issues in China, and has not put a dent in gross sales. Wukong has been hyped to an insane diploma over there and we are actually seeing the fruits of that right here. It stays to be seen simply how excessive this factor goes to go.

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Choose up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller sequence and The Earthborn Trilogy.