Black Myth: Wukong Lifts Steam to 37 Million Concurrent Players for First Time

More than 37 million players were online on Steam for the first time in the PC platform’s history thanks to the raging success of Black Myth: Wukong.

As reported by PC Gamer, Steam hit a new record number of concurrent players on August 25, 2024, as exactly 37,266,324 users were online at once according to player tracking website SteamDB.

The popularity of Steam is always increasing gradually but this spike in players, taking it from around 34 million during most of July and early August to the eventual 37 million number, coincided with the record-breaking release of Black Myth: Wukong.

The action role-playing game set within Chinese mythology and the famous story Journey to the West launched to an enormous 2,223,179 concurrent players on Steam and therefore overtook Cyberpunk 2077 as the most played single-player launch of all time on Valve’s platform. It is currently the second most-played Steam game of all time, behind only PUBG.

Developer Game Science soon revealed that Black Myth: Wukong sold 10 million copies in just three days and had three million concurrent players across all platforms. That puts it up there with the likes of Pokémon in the fastest-selling video game category.

IGN has reported on a super cool Black Myth: Wukong secret that lets you summon one boss to beat another boss while you basically do nothing, and on how one optional boss encountered very early in the game is absolutely destroying players. While you’re here, IGN has plenty more Black Myth: Wukong guides to help you out, including Essential Tips and Tricks, Things Black Myth: Wukong Doesn’t Tell You, and our Boss List and Guides.

Not all press has been positive, however, as Game Science has been criticised for telling content creators who were granted a Steam key that they must not include “feminist propaganda” or use what are called “trigger words” such as COVID-19 in their coverage.

Game Science is also yet to respond to IGN’s previous report compiling numerous sexist comments made by the studio’s founders and other developers spanning the last decade.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.