"Black Myth: Wukong" drove gamers bananas as they embarked on a Soulslike take on "Journey to the West." But what happens now that gamers are done monkeying around?
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00:00Black Myth Wukong drove gamers bananas as they embarked on a Souls-like take on Journey
00:05to the West.
00:06But what happens now that gamers are done monkeying around?
00:09I might as well die!
00:12No chance at immortality!
00:16In a year full of gaming surprises, the mind-blowing launch of Black Myth Wukong stands out as
00:21a particularly memorable moment.
00:23Developer GameScience had only worked on a handful of mobile titles before pivoting to
00:27a AAA action game.
00:29But the studio managed to produce an incredibly engaging combat system, a stunningly detailed
00:34world, and some of the most impressive graphics we've ever seen in a game.
00:38A proper kneel to show gratitude would be appropriate, no?
00:42In the first week, droves of people poured into the game, quickly hitting a peak of 2.4
00:46million concurrent players on Steam.
00:48That's an unbelievable amount of people showing up for a single-player game from a relatively
00:53unknown studio.
00:54But because of that, it's also no surprise Black Myth Wukong hasn't managed to maintain
00:58those numbers.
00:59Since its peak, Black Myth Wukong has lost about 78 percent of its active players.
01:04But the developers at GameScience probably aren't panicking just yet.
01:08The game is still hitting a peak of more than 500,000 players on a near-daily basis, and
01:13that number is pretty fantastic for any game, much less a single-player title.
01:17Odds are good that Black Myth Wukong is going to keep bleeding players for a while, and
01:21it makes total sense.
01:23But there are a couple of things on the horizon that could cause that concurrent player count
01:26to spike.
01:28One is why all you Wukong superfans shouldn't freak out just yet, as well as noting that
01:31the dip looks dire for Black Myth Wukong because the game was so successful.
01:35It's set a record for the second-highest concurrent player count in Steam history, and it's the
01:40only single-player game in the top five.
01:42Helldivers 2 lost 90 percent of its players, and that game is still doing largely fine.
01:47While that's a live-service title that keeps getting updated, there's a pretty clear reason
01:51why players are leaving Black Myth Wukong.
01:53They either beat it, or gave up on the super-challenging Souls-like game.
01:57"...how ungrateful."
01:59Black Myth Wukong has more than enough content to justify dropping $60 on it.
02:03There are six massive levels, all filled with secret bosses, items, and locations to uncover.
02:09There are also more than 100 bosses for players to test their skills against, so you can easily
02:13spend dozens of hours just hunting down the biggest enemies that Black Myth Wukong can
02:18throw at you and studying their moves.
02:20Even with all that, however, the game isn't infinite.
02:23Players have had their fun with GameScience's epic action-adventure, and now they're moving
02:26on to a new title.
02:28As more people beat the game, they're going to leave it behind.
02:31However, the developers are already working on ways to bring more players in.
02:34Shortly after the launch of Black Myth Wukong, Xbox players got some bad news.
02:39The port for that system is still an indeterminate amount of time away from release.
02:44GameScience still hasn't announced an official release date for Black Myth Wukong on Xbox,
02:48but whenever that day comes, there's going to be a big wave of new players heading into
02:52the game.
02:53That's not the only plan GameScience has in the works, however.
02:55Black Myth Wukong fans had their dreams come true less than a month after the game was
02:59released when it was revealed that the developers are already hard at work on DLC.
03:03But what's they change?
03:06As ambitious as the game is, the developers originally planned on making it significantly
03:10longer.
03:11So we know that GameScience already has a pile of ideas for where to take players next.
03:15Black Myth Wukong is seeing a massive drop in players, but we imagine that the game's
03:20overall lifespan is going to end up being just as impressive as its initial launch.