Black Myth: Wukong Grossed More Than $800m on Steam in August

August 2024 was another record-breaking month on Steam. In addition to a record number of releases and a new CCU record, full games sales on the platform generated nearly $1.44 billion in revenue, with a single game, Black Myth: Wukong from China's Game Science, accounting for more than half of that.

In August 2024, a total of 1,696 games were released on Steam, almost seven per cent more than the previous month and over 40 per cent more than a year ago. A total of 63.11 million games (full games only, excluding free-to-play) were sold, with revenue from full games, excluding in-game sales, increasing to $1.44 billion, nearly €1,3 billion (+115 percent month-over-month and +61 percent year-over-year). This is the highest monthly revenue recorded by VGI since the start of data collection in February 2018. The number of concurrent users (CCU) on the platform also reached a new high of 37.3 million. The number of Steam accounts is estimated at 1.81 billion.

One game is largely responsible for this record performance: Black Myth: Wukong from China-based Game Science. According to the developers, the mythological action RPG sold over 10 million copies on PC and PS5 in its first three days. VGI estimates that by the end of August, the game had sold nearly 17 million copies on Steam alone, with estimated revenue of more than $800 million, nearly €721 million. 76 per cent of buyers are from China, up from 80 per cent at launch. "Players of this game, unsurprisingly, skew heavily towards Asian games with the top 3 highest overlapping games being Asian," VGI says. One of the overlapping games is Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty from Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo Games. Before launch, Black Myth: Wukong was on almost five million wishlists. After two weeks, the average playtime was 27 hours, and 95 per cent of the more than 550,000 user reviews are positive - and not only the outstanding visuals are praised.

Black Myth: Wukong is already the best-selling game of the year on Steam. By the way: Baldur's Gate 3, last year's bestselling Steam game, was also released in August. Without Black Myth: Wukong, the month would have been pretty quiet. "Well known existing franchises continued to sell well in August, despite the general lack of deep sales. Lack of significant new releases pushes players back to older AAA titles they haven't played yet", VGI says in its newsletter. After Game Science's game, Baldur's Gate 3 generated the highest revenue (again, only through full game releases), followed by Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring, EA Sports FC 24, Helldivers 2, Hunt: Showdown 1896, Cyberpunk 2077, Forza Horizon 4 and 7 Days to Die. The sales of these games were in the low tens of millions of dollars or less; the scaling of the VGI graphics does not allow for more precise conclusions. Hunt: Showdown 1896 is in the top 10 because the big 2.0 update was released on 13 August. Forza Horizon 4 is about to be discontinued (due to expiring licences) and is therefore selling particularly well. 7 Days to Die has left early access after almost ten years.