Over 8 million copies sold on Steam, 29 million viewers in China, and more data on Black Myth: Wukong's success

Various analysts and research firms continue to share data on the successful launch of Black Myth: Wukong. The game, meanwhile, continues to break records on Steam.

Black Myth: Wukong

UPDATE (August 23): Game Science has officially announced that Black Myth: Wukong has sold 10 million copies across all platforms within the first three days of launch.

As we reported yesterday, Chinese analytics estimate Black Myth: Wukong’s first-day sales at over 4.5 million copies, with 3 million of those on Steam.

New data shared by VG Insights shows that the game has sold around 8.4 million units on Valve’s store in its first 48 hours. It has an impressive playtime of 9.7 hours (average) and 7.9 hours (median). VG Insights also noted on X that China accounts for 80% of total sales.

This is in line with information from Gamalytic, which estimates sales of Black Myth: Wukong at 8.7 million units.

Note: Both platforms use their own algorithms and methods to estimate sales and revenues of Steam games. VG Insights combines data from its own database of actual sales figures with the Boxleiter method (number of user reviews multiplied by X) and adjusts its data using Steam’s weekly top sellers charts. Gamalytic bases its data on aggregated estimates from the Boxleiter method, CCU count, top seller lists, and public Steam profiles. Keep in mind that each method is not perfect, with VG Insights saying that its estimates are within ±5% margin of error at an aggregate level and Gamalytic claiming its aggregate accuracy is 99% (could be lower for recently released games).

Black Myth: Wukong’s estimated figures, according to VG Insights (left) and Gamalytic (right)

When looking at other data on Black Myth: Wukong’s launch, there is a new article from Niko Partners. The firm says the game generated 1.7 billion views on Chinese social media platform on  Weibo within the first 24 hours of launch.

Black Myth: Wukong also became the most watched game on Huya, DouYu, and Bilibili, reaching a total of 29 million viewers across all three platforms. “It was a record-breaking launch for a single player game on Chinese game live streaming platforms, surpassing Cyberpunk 2077′s metrics in 2020,” analysts noted.

Niko Partners president and CEO Lisa Hanson also spoke with Bloomberg about the game, with host Ed Ludlow saying that PlayStation 5 was the top-selling consumer electronic product on Alibaba for the week leading up to the launch of Black Myth: Wukong. Despite the historical popularity of free-to-play mobile titles in China, Game Science’s breakthrough hit points to the huge interest of local players in high-quality, premium games and should serve as a signal to international developers.

“It’s a perfect example of a lot of things, like Chinese game development prowess, how Chinese game developers are really world class, and how a relatively unknown company like Game Science, backed by Tencent and Hero Entertainment, could just have developed this game for years on end and then have it come out at the top of every chart,” Hanson said.

As we have yet to see the official figures, Black Myth: Wukong continues to dominate Steam. After peaking at over 2.2 million concurrent players in less than 24 hours, the game has just surpassed 2.4 million CCU (at the time of writing this article).

Although most of its player base comes from China, Hanson noted that Black Myth: Wukong is one of the biggest successes for PC single-player offline games globally. She compared it to miHoYo’s Genshin Impact, which was a “national big hit that went global.”