Black Myth: Wukong Breaks Steam Records on Release Day

Game Science’s action RPG Black Myth: Wukong was released today, August 20, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. Hype for the title has been growing over the past few months, and players quickly showed their support as the title broke into Steam’s all-time most-played games within mere hours of its launch.

The game attracted over 1.44 million concurrent players on Steam within its first few hours, making it the platform’s fourth biggest game ever when using that metric. Black Myth: Wukong blew past Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, and Baldur’s Gate 3, with only Palworld, Counter-Strike 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds boasting more concurrent players.

Currently, 2,111,104 players are enjoying the Chinese mythology-inspired title.

The above numbers don’t consider players on WeGame, where the title is sold in China, or PlayStation 5.

Black Myth: Wukong is based on Journey to the West, one of the great classical novels of Chinese literature. Players step into the shoes of the Destined One, taking on various challenges and exploring to “uncover the obscured truth beneath the veil of a glorious legend from the past,” according to the official description.

In March, Nvidia announced that the game would launch with both path tracing and DLSS 3.5 support.

“Enabling Full Ray Tracing in Black Myth: Wukong sees environmental effects and detail taken to the next level. Reflections on water reflect all surrounding detail. Water caustics add further realism, accurately rendering the refraction and reflection of light. Fully ray-traced Global Illumination ensures lighting indoors and outdoors is pixel perfect, darkening areas where light is occluded or doesn’t reach, and realistically illuminating the world by bouncing light,” a blog post on Nvidia’s website reads.

Black Myth: Wukong was released today, August 20, for PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. An Xbox Series X/S version is still in development.