Monster Hunter Wilds tops 1.3M concurrent players, on track to become 5th biggest Steam game of all time by peak CCU

Capcom has launched Monster Hunter Wilds, likely its biggest release of the current fiscal year. Here’re the first results for the game on Steam based on publicly available metrics.

UPDATE: Monster Hunter Wilds eventually peaked at over 1.38 million concurrent players, making it the 5th biggest release on Steam of all time by that metric.

Monster Hunter Wilds received critical acclaim, with an average Metascore ranging from 88 (PC) to 90/100 (PS5). It also has a 95% approval on OpenCritic, with an average score of 89/100 based on 113 reviews.

With strong pre-orders and successful open beta tests, it is no surprise that Monster Hunter Wilds has already amassed a huge audience in less than 24 hours since its global launch on February 28.

At the time of writing, it peaked at 1,307,976 concurrent players on Valve’s platform (via SteamDB). Note that the game is also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, but there is no publicly available user data for the consoles.

Monster Hunter Wilds’ peak player count is likely to increase over the weekend as more users join the game. Still, 1.3+ million CCU is more than enough to make it Capcom’s biggest Steam release by that metric.

Wilds is followed by Monster Hunter: World (334.6k CCU), Monster Hunter Rise (231.3k CCU), Dragon’s Dogma 2 (228.5k CCU), and Resident Evil 4 remake (168.1k CCU). We didn’t take into account Capcom Arcade Stadium (488.7k CCU) and 2nd Stadium (463.9k CCU), which are compilations of classic arcade titles with one free game to download.

Capcom’s biggest Steam releases by peak concurrent players

The strong launch also secured Monster Hunter Wilds a place among the biggest Steam releases by peak concurrent players of all time. It has already topped results of hits like Dota 2 (1.3 million CCU), Cyberpunk 2077 (1 million CCU), Hogwarts Legacy (879k CCU), and Baldur’s Gate 3 (875.3k CCU).

Wilds is on track to take over Lost Ark, which currently ranks 5th with 1.32 million CCU. The full top 10* can be seen below:

*Note: The list doesn’t include several games from the SteamDB charts: Banana, which peaked at over 917k concurrent users, because it is more of an app for speculations rather than a game (people keep it launched for hours to get tradable cards).

1. PUBG — 3.2 million CCU;
2. Black Myth: Wukong — 2.4 million CCU;
3. Palworld — 2.1 million CCU;
4. Counter-Strike 2 | CS:GO — 1.8 million CCU;
5. Lost Ark — 1.32 million CCU;
6. Monster Hunter Wilds — 1.3 million CCU;
7. Dota 2 — 1.2 million CCU;
8. Cyberpunk 2077 — just over 1 million CCU;
9. Elden Ring — 953.4k CCU;
10. New World — 917.2k CCU.

Despite massive player numbers, Monster Hunter Wilds received mixed reviews from users. At the time of writing, only 47% of more than 9,000 reviews on Steam are positive.

According to Steam Scout, more than half of all reviews are currently written in Simplified Chinese, with only 14% of them being positive. 29.5% are in English (68% positive), followed by Traditional Chinese (4.74%, 66% positive), Korean (4.46%, 72% positive), and Japanese (2%, 61% positive).

Most Chinese players, as well as users from other countries, criticize Monster Hunter Wilds for poor optimization, complaining about crashes and other performance issues even on high-end PCs. This is similar to what happened with Dragon’s Dogma 2, another CPU-heavy open world game from Capcom built with its RE Engine.

The Japanese company has already released a troubleshooting guide for Steam users, providing some basic tips on how to improve the game’s performance. However, it is unclear how quickly Capcom plans to release patches and other fixes.

Monster Hunter Wilds’ Steam reviews by language

Wilds has been climbing the Steam charts for months leading up to its launch, indicating strong pre-orders and huge interest from players. It eventually became the highest-grossing premium title globally for the week of February 18-25. And there is no doubt it will top the charts post-launch.

Considering the franchise is also popular on consoles, Monster Hunter Wilds is on track to be a huge commercial success for Capcom. The company previousy expressed high hopes for the game, expecting it to boost its H2 revenue and profit, especially against the lack of similar huge releases in the previous quarters. So it will be interesting to see the figures Capcom releases in its report for the fourth quarter ending March 31, 2025.