Black Myth_ Wukong smashes Palworld and Counter-Strike 2 to become the second most-played Steam game

Friends, we've got a live one. After easily of both and Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong looks like it's cruising into place as one of the biggest Steam launches of all time. With just over 2.1 million concurrent players at time of writing—11 hours after launch—it's got the second-place record for most concurrents on Steam ever, per .

Until today, the first, second, and third-place record holders for most concurrent players on Steam were PUBG, Palworld, and Counter-Strike 2 (at 3.2 million, 2.1 million, and 1.8 million players respectively). Wukong has totally upended that, knocking CS2 and Palworld off their bronze and silver podium spots and leaving only PUBG's record intact (for now).

What explains its meteoric rise? You can point to plenty of things, of course. The most obvious is that Black Myth: Wukong is a highly anticipated release out of a Chinese development studio. Arousing the interest of the Chinese market—forecasted to be home to in as little as three years—is a pretty solid way of getting your numbers up at launch.

That's not to belittle Wukong's achievement. It's not just the game's appeal to Chinese audiences that's made it so successful. Our own Tyler Colp had a blast with the game, scoring it 87% in his and praising it for hitting "similar highs" to Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. It's a love-in over in the Steam reviews, too: The game has a 96% "Overwhelmingly positive" rating off [[link]] the [[link]] back of 64,000 reviews at time of writing.

So it's a (by all accounts) great game that's garnered a huge amount of interest, particularly in a market with a truly gargantuan potential audience. Mystery solved then, eh? I say not. If you ask me, the real lesson of Black Myth: Wukong is that the gamers are absolutely starving for more games about monkeys. A new Ape Escape would absolutely clean up right now.

Or maybe it's the other things. Fine. Either way, PUBG shouldn't rest easy. The million-player gulf between Wukong's current player count and PUBG's all-time record might seem insurmountable, but you could [[link]] have said the same thing about CS2 and Palworld's records mere hours ago. The , and it's anyone's guess as to where and when it'll level off.