Black Myth: Wukong has surpassed Counter-Strike 2 and Palworld to become the second-most-played Steam games of all time in less than a week after its launch. It's also gaining on PUBG’s gold medal

We've got one live. Black Myth Wukong is on its way to becoming one of the most successful Steam launches ever. SteamDB charts show that it has just over 2.1 millions concurrent players as of the time of writing, 11 hours after launch. This is the second highest number ever for concurrent players on Steam.

Until today, PUBG, Palworld and Counter-Strike 2 held the top three spots for the most concurrent Steam players (3.2 million, 2.1 millions, and 1.8million players, respectively). Wukong has completely flipped that, knocking PUBG off its bronze and silver podium positions and leaving only PUBG’s record intact.

What is the reason for its meteoric rise in popularity? There are many reasons for its meteoric rise. Black Myth Wukong, a highly anticipated game from a Chinese studio, is the most obvious. It's a good way to boost your launch numbers by attracting the attention of the Chinese market, which is expected to have 730 million players in just three years.

This is not to minimize Wukong's achievements. It's not only that the game's appeal for Chinese audiences has made it so popular. Tyler Colp, our own Tyler Colp, had a blast playing the game. He gave it an 87% rating in his Black Myth: Wukong Review and praised it for having "similar highs" as Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Steam reviews are also a resounding "Yes": The game received a 96% "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating, based on 64,000 reviews.

It's a great game (by all accounts), and it's garnered a lot of interest in a market that has a truly massive potential audience. The mystery is solved, eh! I say no. The real lesson from Black Myth: Wukong, if you ask me is that gamers are absolutely hungry for more monkey games. A new Ape escape would be a huge hit right now.

Or, maybe it's something else. Fine. PUBG shouldn’t rest easy, either way. It may seem impossible to bridge the gap between Wukong and PUBG, but it was just hours ago that you could have said this about CS2 or Palworld. The line on the graph is constantly climbing and no one knows when or where it will level off.