China’s Wukong hit sells 10 million copies in three days

BEIJING – Black Myth: Wukong, a Chinese-made video game backed by Tencent Holdings, took just 83 hours to sell 10 million copies, one of the fastest debuts in industry history.

It reached the milestone by Aug 23 evening Beijing time after being released on Aug 20, said developer Game Science on X. Its peak concurrent users, which counts the number of people playing at one time around the world, reached three million across PC and PlayStation platforms.

An action-adventure title based on the mythology around the fabled Monkey King, Wukong

was an instant success

and became the most popular single-player title on PC platform Steam on its first day, toppling much-hyped competition such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring, according to data tracker SteamDB.

Wukong’s popularity endured, and it set a new high of concurrent players on Steam on Aug 22, confirming its position as the biggest PC debut in recent memory.

The game is priced at about US$38 (S$49) in China and Hong Kong – versus US$60 in the United States – and skews heavily towards the local market. It lovingly recreates historic Chinese temples, and one of its founders

expressed “the simple love” for the nation

in a documentary by state news agency Xinhua on the eve of the game’s release.

Wukong turned profitable on its first day and earned more than US$450 million in gross revenue over its first three days, said Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad. Sony Group ran a sales promotion for its PlayStation 5 in China for the week around Wukong’s launch and saw stores sell out the console, he added.

Counting sales across Valve’s Steam, Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Tencent’s WeGame, Wukong has reached the 10 million copies milestone faster than Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy, both considered smash hits in their own right.

The strong performance may help shore up expectations that China’s US$40 billion-plus gaming arena is rounding a corner, after years of regulatory hold-ups.

This summer marked an unusually busy season of major debuts, including Tencent’s Dungeon & Fighter Mobile, NetEase’s Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile and indie studio Mihoyo’s Zenless Zone Zero. Developed by Hangzhou-based Game Science, Wukong marks China’s biggest PC launch in history. Bloomberg