Crikey, you lot really love tracking down giant creatures to turn their hides into armour, because Monster Hunter Wilds has seen a massive amount of players on Steam.
I remember the days when Monster Hunter was that niche series that your friend played and swore by, but only them and like one other person actually played it. It was beloved by those that did play it, but it’s only in recent years where it’s become as popular as it has. Well, the days of it being niche are clearly over, as the latest entry in the series Monster Hunter Wilds is doing absolute numbers on Steam. As tracked over on SteamDB, the game has managed to reach a concurrent player count peak of 987,482, a figure that, almost unbelievably, makes it the eighth most-played game on Steam of all time.
It’s really quite hard to sell just how wild that is – that puts it above titles like Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Marvel Rivals, games obviously known for being massively successful. What’s worth noting further is that this is just release day, a Thursday, and games often do even better on launch weekend, so it’s entirely possible we could see it overtake seventh place on the Steam top-sellers (which currently belongs to Cyberpunk 2077). For some added context, Monster Hunter World, which came out in 2018, only achieved a peak of 334,684 players, and Monster Hunter Rise a peak of 231,360 players (though that one had already been on Switch for a year prior). That’s some massive growth right there, and doesn’t even include console players.
What is worth pointing out though is that reviews on Steam are painting a slightly different picture. Right now, the game is sitting at a mixed rating, seemingly mostly due to the fact that the game is struggling to run for a lot of people, even those who claim to have the recommended requirements. Right now there’s only about 6000 reviews on Steam (a few thousand of those being from copies not purchased on the platform directly), which is miniscule compared to the player count, so that could change once more players put time into the game, but Capcom might have some work to do to get that rating changed.
If it’s any consolation, our own Dom thinks that Monster Hunter Wilds is actually very good, giving it full marks in their review, so it might just still be worth your time.
