Over 8 Million Copies Sold on Steam, 29 Million Viewers in China, and More Data on the Success of Black Myth: Wukong

Numerous analysts and research firms continue to share data on the successful launch of Black Myth: Wukong. Meanwhile, the game continues to break records on Steam.

As mentioned yesterday, Chinese analysts estimated first-day sales of Black Myth: Wukong to be over 4.5 million copies, with 3 million of those sold on Steam.

New data shared by VG Insights shows that the game sold about 8.4 million units on Valve’s store in the first 48 hours. It also boasts an impressive average playtime of 9.7 hours and a median of 7.9 hours. VG Insights mentioned on X (formerly Twitter) that China makes up 80% of the total sales.

This aligns with information from Gamalytic, which estimates Black Myth: Wukong’s sales at around 8.7 million units.

Looking at other data surrounding the launch of Black Myth: Wukong, there’s a new article from Niko Partners. The company says the game achieved 1.7 billion views on the Chinese social media platform Weibo within the first 24 hours of its launch.

Black Myth: Wukong also became the most-watched game on Huya, DouYu, and Bilibili, reaching a total of 29 million viewers across all three platforms. Analysts noted that “this was a record-breaking launch for a single-player game on Chinese live streaming platforms, surpassing the metrics of Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020.”

Niko Partners’ President and CEO, Lisa Hanson, also spoke with Bloomberg about the game, where broadcaster Ed Ludlow mentioned that the PlayStation 5 was the best-selling consumer electronics product on Alibaba during the week leading up to the launch of Black Myth: Wukong. Despite the historical popularity of free-to-play mobile games in China, Game Science’s breakthrough success indicates enormous interest from local gamers in high-quality premium games, and it should serve as a signal to international developers.

Hanson said, “It’s a perfect example of many things, such as the prowess of Chinese game development, how Chinese game developers are truly world-class, and how a relatively unknown company like Game Science, with support from Tencent and Hero Entertainment, can develop this game for many years and then come out on top of every chart.”

Even though we haven’t seen the official numbers yet, Black Myth: Wukong continues to dominate on Steam. In just under 24 hours, the game saw a peak of over 2.2 million players online at the same time, and it has now climbed to more than 2.4 million concurrent players as I write this.
“Hanson pointed out that while most of the players are from China, Black Myth: Wukong has still achieved major success globally as an offline single-player PC game.” She went on to compare it to… miHoYo’s Genshin Impact, which was “a huge national hit that went global.”

Black Myth: Wukong sold over 4.5 million copies at launch, according to Chinese analysts.

Black Myth: Wukong attracted millions of players at launch, especially from Chinese users. Here are the initial sales estimates for the game.

The local financial news agency Cailianshe (财联社) reported that the top-selling games list in China estimated that Black Myth: Wukong sold over 4.5 million copies across all platforms. Analysts pointed out that the game has already sold over 3 million copies just on Steam, but there’s still some uncertainty about how the other 1.5 million copies are spread across platforms like PlayStation. 5, EGS, and Tencent’s WeGame portal).

The article also didn’t specify whether these figures represent global or local sales. Black Myth: Wukong is undoubtedly a true phenomenon in China, so it’s clear that the vast majority of units sold are currently coming from that country.

According to analysts, Black Myth: Wukong has already generated over 1.5 billion yuan ($210.2 million). However, the game’s development and marketing costs remain undisclosed.

It’s worth noting that the game also saw a massive number of pre-orders, which helped it top Steam charts multiple times before its launch.

In less than 24 hours since its global launch on August 20, *Black Myth: Wukong* peaked at over 2.2 million concurrent players on Steam. This is the second-best result ever on the platform, after Krafton’s successful battle royale game PUBG: Battlegrounds (3.2 million CCU).

Currently, the majority of Wukong’s active player base is in China. According to Steam Scout, over 92% of all reviews for the game were written by local users. For comparison, English-language reviews make up only 3.98% of the total.

The number of players started to decline around 16:00 UTC, dropping to 200,000-250,000 concurrent players when most Chinese users were asleep (China is UTC+8). Now, the numbers are rising again, reflecting the huge following that Black Myth: Wukong has in the country. As I was writing this report, over 1.6 million people were playing the game at the same time, which was around 7:20 PM local time.

“These kinds of fluctuations are common in many games on Steam, especially since a large part of the audience is made up of Chinese players.”For instance, Naraka: Bladepoint (with China accounting for over 83% of all reviews) also shows daily CCU spikes between 16:00 and 00:00 UTC.

Black Myth: Wukong currently holds a ‘Very Positive’ rating (96% positive) on Steam, based on over 174,000 reviews from people who purchased it directly on the platform. Developer Game Science has yet to disclose the official stats and figures for the game.”