Black Myth: Wukong smashes Steam concurrent single-player record

[zohaibahd]

What just happened? Black Myth: Wukong has taken the gaming world by storm with its monumental launch on Steam. Within just 24 hours of release, the title claimed the fourth-highest concurrent player count in Steam's history, and it has now broken the concrurrent record for a single-player title.

At the time of writing, Black Myth: Wukong has amassed a staggering 2,223,179 concurrent players on Valve's platform following its Tuesday launch. That's an achievement that puts it ahead of Palworld, which peaked at 2,101,867 players earlier this year.

The real question now is whether the game can dethrone the reigning king, PUBG, and its colossal peak of 3,257,248 concurrent players to become the most-played game in Steam's history. It's certainly an extremely ambitious target and things seem to have cooled off following the initial rush. But who knows?

What's even more impressive is that these figures only account for the Steam version of the game. Black Myth: Wukong has also launched on PlayStation 5, the Chinese gaming platform WeGame, and the Epic Games Store. An Xbox Series X/S release is on the horizon too. It's safe to assume that the game's overall player count is stratospheric.

Beyond player numbers, the reviews tell an equally impressive story. Nearly 150,000 Steam players have weighed in so far, with a stellar 96% positive rating earning the game Valve's coveted "Overwhelmingly Positive" status. Game Science seems to have delivered a remarkably polished experience right out of the gate, which is a big deal in an industry that seems to be plagued by buggy AAA releases of late.

The only potential hiccup could be faced by PC users rocking Intel's 13th- and 14th-gen CPUs. Wukong developers have warned that players with those chips may run into error messages, instability, and crashes during shader compilation, potentially leading to an "Out of video memory" error.

In a pinned Steam community post, the dev team outlined a couple of potential workarounds. For starters, they suggest underclocking the CPU. This can be done by using tools like Intel XTU though it may impact performance. Skipping shader compilation is another workaround, but stability issues could still persist without a proper BIOS update to address the underlying problem. So for now, stay on the lookout for any BIOS and driver updates.

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Black Myth: Wukong smashes Steam concurrent single-player record

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I'm not interested personally, but I'm glad to see the attempted blackmail by Sweet Baby Inc. has absolutely backfired.

Take note game industry: Reject the leeches, make a good game instead, and you will be rewarded.

 

[loki1944]

Not surprising if they are 99% Chinese.

 

[NotQuiteSapien]

I had a look at the "The game crashes during shader compilation. How can I fix this?" discussion thread in Steam.
Not all problems in the thread are due to the 13/14 gen dregradation, but it still seems to be a likely cause for most users. What is really scary is that the majority are blaming the developer and doesn't understand that the problem lies with their cpu and Intel. Then there is also the misconception that the microcode update will fix degraded cpus.

Intel really needs take more responsibility and inform their customers, but that will surely never happen.

 

[cfenton]

I'm not interested personally, but I'm glad to see the attempted blackmail by Sweet Baby Inc. has absolutely backfired.

Take note game industry: Reject the leeches, make a good game instead, and you will be rewarded.

I don't know what Sweet Baby Inc is, but the only lesson here is that a Chinese developer making a game about Chinese mythology will probably do well in China. There are 250,000 reviews and less than 10,000 are in English. I know there are more than two languages reviewing the game, but that's still an unusual ratio. I mean, a success is a success, but I think this is way beyond what the quality of the game alone would usually bring.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I'm not interested personally, but I'm glad to see the attempted blackmail by Sweet Baby Inc. has absolutely backfired.

Take note game industry: Reject the leeches, make a good game instead, and you will be rewarded.

- Yeah hate to burst your agenda bubble but I got two words (sounds?) for ya: Chy Na

I guess you're right though, if all game makers instead bow down to that sweet sweet China demographic they too can have 2 million concurrent.

All hail Sweet Xi Inc.

 

[poshflamingos]

I'm not interested personally, but I'm glad to see the attempted blackmail by Sweet Baby Inc. has absolutely backfired.

Take note game industry: Reject the leeches, make a good game instead, and you will be rewarded.

Games like Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring did not reject the "leeches" and are still massive, genre/generation-defining successes.
A game's success has nothing whatsoever to do with those "leeches". There are plenty of "woke" games that succeed and plenty of "non-woke" games that fail.

 

[Watzupken]

Success of a game is determined by a few factors,
1. Good/ decent story line
2. Fun gameplay

Optional, good graphics. The sad fact is, most current AAA titles only focus on the graphics and leveraging on mature franchise to try and milk gamers. So it’s a quicker and cheaper way to get a game to market, but is not going to be successful. Add in game purchase, it’s just going to make things worst.

 

[Loli Pop Carbon]

It's funny to see that "because it's Chinese" and "because it's Chinese mythology" have been the spotlight for the game success, especially on Reddit. No one mention "because it's US" "because it's Marvel" when a successful game has its majority players from US.

I get it that Chinese has Billions of people, but they are regular players like anywhere else in the world. Why does it matter because they're Chinese? And you can treat the Mythology like a popular IP being made into a game, again like any other games out there.

It does not change the fact that it's a successful game. I can only see those who said "because it's Chinese lol very expected" as people who are salty of this game's success. Well maybe because it's Reddit. That's also a reason.

 

[Bamda]

I don't know what Sweet Baby Inc is, but the only lesson here is that a Chinese developer making a game about Chinese mythology will probably do well in China. There are 250,000 reviews and less than 10,000 are in English. I know there are more than two languages reviewing the game, but that's still an unusual ratio. I mean, a success is a success, but I think this is way beyond what the quality of the game alone would usually bring.

So, if it's a non-English review it doesn't matter/count? LOL

 

[Endymio]

Intel really needs take more responsibility and inform their customers, but that will surely never happen.

Do you wish them to commission sky-writing blimps over major world cities? If there's a tech site or business site on the planet that hasn't run multiple stories on the issue, I don't know of it.

Intel's customers are the VARs. Some VARs have directly informed their customers; some have not.