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It has been a tremendous launch for Monster Hunter Wilds, the new mainline entry in the series that has arrived with great reviews, and now a tremendous concurrent player peak on Steam just half a day after launch.

Early on Friday morning, during prime Asian gaming time, Monster Hunter Wilds peaked at 1.307 million players, and while that’s dropped by 500,000 or so since, it is likely to go even higher over the course of the weekend, with ultimate peaks usually ending up on Sundays for a lot of days. You can see how Monster Hunter Wilds stacks up against the top 10 Steam peaks ever:

1. PUBG – 3.25 million
2. Black Myth Wukong – 2.4 million
3. Palworld – 2.1 million
4. Counter-Strike 2 – 1.8 million
5. Lost Ark – 1.32 million
6. Monster Hunter Wilds – 1.3 million
7. Dota 2 – 1.29 million
8. Cyberpunk 2077 – 1.05 million
9. Elden Ring – 953K
10. Banana – 917K

As you can see, there are only eight games ever that have topped a million concurrents on Steam, and it seems possible if not likely that Monster Hunter Wilds may beat out Lost Ark soon enough. CS2 at 1.8 million is probably a level that it can’t reach. It is notable, however, that three of the top 10 games (four if you count the bot-infested money printer Banana as a game) were out in the past year alone. Palworld was an explosive viral success while Black Myth Wukong lit the Chinese playerbase on fire for record numbers.

The catch here is that Monster Hunter Wilds has a Steam user score that’s only 42% positive. This does not have to do with the content of the game, which has been well-received by fans, but because of technical and optimization problems that game has even running on high-end machines. It may not be a significant number of the total scoring the game low, but it has rubbed a lot of players the wrong way. Hopefully there will be patches to fix these issues soon.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.