How Black Myth: Wukong and its 10 million copies sold in three days compare to other best-selling games

Black Myth: Wukong has sold 10 million copies globally across all platforms withing the first three days of its launch on August 20, Game Science announced in a post on X.

“Thanks to all players for your support and love. Have a great gaming weekend,” the studio wrote.

The game is available on Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Tencent’s WeGame. The share of each platform remains undisclosed, but analysts previously estimated that Black Myth: Wukong has sold over 8 million units on Steam alone in its first 48 hours.

Black Myth: Wukong has sold 10 million copies across all platforms.
(Data as of 21:00 Beijing time, August 23, 2024)

Thanks to all players worldwide for your support and love.
Have a great gaming weekend!#BlackMythWukong pic.twitter.com/mp3mk9JxrX

— Black Myth: Wukong (@BlackMythGame) August 23, 2024

Game Science added that Black Myth: Wukong attracted 3 million concurrent players across PC and PS5. On August 21, it peaked at over 2.4 million on Steam, so it appears that most of its audience comes from that store. This not only makes it the biggest launch of 2024 by that metric, but also the 2nd biggest title on the platform of all time by peak CCU — behind only PUBG (3.2 million CCU). So it will be interesting to see whether Game Science’s breakthrough hit can get any closer to Krafton’s all-time record this weekend.

The lion’s share of Black Myth: Wukong’s sales are domestic, given that over 90% of all user reviews are written in Chinese and that the peak player count occurs during local time. The game currently has over 280k user reviews on Steam, with 96% of them being positive.

When looking at reception on other platforms, Wukong has an average rating of 4.57/5 (from 34.5k users) on the PS Store and a 92.5% score on WeGame (over 6.5k reviews).

Black Myth: Wukong also (unsurprisingly) topped the Steam global charts, becoming the highest-grossing game for the week of August 13-20. It will likely continue to dominate the next week.

How does Black Myth: Wukong compare to other best-selling games?

Looking at Game Science’s global success, we decided to recall some of the other best-selling games of the last five years. We only took into the account officially disclosed sales figures (both at launch and lifetime), so this list doesn’t include top-sellers such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare I-III (we only have revenue numbers and MWI’s first-year sales of 30 million copies), FIFA, or Baldur’s Gate 3.

• Elden Ring — 12 million copies sold in 16 days (lifetime sales — over 25 million units).
• Hogwarts Legacy — 12 million copies sold in 13 days (lifetime sales — over 24 million units).
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo Switch only) — over 10 million copies sold in three days (lifetime sales — 20.8 million units).
• Pokémon Scarlet / Violet (Nintendo Switch only) — 10 million copies sold in three days (lifetime sales — 25.29 million units).
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo Switch only) — 11.7 million copies sold in 11 days (lifetime sales — 45.85 million units).
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 13 million copies sold in 10 days (lifetime sales — over 25 million units).
• Monster Hunter Rise — 4 million copies sold in three days (lifetime sales — 15.4 million units).
• Resident Evil 4 (remake) — 3 million copies sold in two days (lifetime sales — 7.6 million units).
• God of War Ragnarök (PS5 only) — 5 million copies sold in its first week (lifetime sales — over 15 million units).
• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (PS5 only) — 2.5 million copies sold in 24 hours (lifetime sales — over 11 million units).

Black Myth: Wukong’s launch looks really strong against these titles. And here is how it compares to sales of other major 2024 releases (only officially disclosed figures):

• Palworld — 8 million copies sold on Steam in its first six days (life-to-date — over 15 million units sold and 25 million players overall, including Xbox and Game Pass users)
• Helldivers 2 — 12 million copies sold in three months;
• Dragon’s Dogma 2 — 3 million copies sold in two months;
• Content Warning — 2.2 million copies sold in two months (PC only);
• Manor Lords — 2 million copies sold in three weeks (PC only);
• Tekken 8 — 2 million copies sold in its first month;
• Persona 3 Reload — 1 million copies sold in its first week;
• Balatro — 1 million copies sold in less than a month (life-to-date sales — over 2 million units);
• Stellar Blade — 1 million copies sold in less than a month (PS5 only).