Black Myth: Wukong player count soars up Steam charts, second most played game ever

In an astounding turn of events, the Black Myth: Wukong player count has skyrocketed, making it the second most played game on Steam ever, and in less than 24 hours post launch.

With over 2.1 million active players, Black Myth: Wukong now sits only behind Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, which had an all-time peak of 3.2 million players way back in 2018. And it's worth keeping in mind that these are just the Steam numbers, which means PlayStation 5 and the Chinese gaming client WeGame aren't being counted, so that number is likely much, much higher already.

The community response to the success of the game is something to be seen rather than explained, with hundreds of memes being posted, all following a generally similar format.

So why is Black Myth: Wukong doing such insane numbers? Well a lot of it has to do with extreme popularity in China, due to Wukong himself being such an important part of both their cultural heritage, and an important figure from a lot of influential media. Like, seriously, Wukong kind of rocks. In the 16th century novel 'Journey to the West' by Wu Cheng’en in which he gained a large amount of his fame, he is reported to be able to remember every monkey ever born and can cover 54,000KM in a single leap. That's pretty hardcore. Oh and he also supposedly rebelled against Heaven, which is arguably even more hardcore.

Black Myth: Wukong is also being reviewed pretty solidly across the board, with a score of 82/100 on Metacritic. The combat is incredibly clean, the bosses are great, and the only real rough patches are some pretty plentiful and notable bugs as well as performance issues, which will hopefully be ironed out in short order.

What time will do to Black Myth: Wukong is yet to be seen, but for the time being, people are loving it and I don't see this one falling out of the public eye for quite some time.

If you're looking for some more Monkey business from us here at Pro Game Guides, then check out our piece on How to equip and unequip mask and headgear in Black Myth: Wukong.