Much like the gigantic beasts roaming the Forbidden Lands, Monster Hunter Wilds is raking in massive player numbers since its launch last week, setting records as developer Capcom’s biggest launch ever with over one million concurrent players on Steam.
These latest figures certainly come as no surprise, as the highly anticipated sequel had already received its fair share of success even before its launch, with its first open beta in October last year already topping charts as the third-highest played new game of 2024, attaining an all-time peak of 463,798 players on Steam.
With these numbers in mind, it was clear that the game was going to be one of the biggest launches of the year, and sure enough, Monster Hunter Wilds cemented itself into Steam’s top ten charts a mere hour after launch, only to shatter that record even further by hitting the coveted one million player milestone on the platform, on the same day, no less.
As reported by X\Twitter user Genki_JPN, the game hit a peak count of 1,031,721 concurrent players on its release day, making it the eighth game ever on the platform to attain this milestone, a feat shared amongst games such as PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and Black Myth: Wukong, which hold the top two spots. This also makes Monster Hunter Wilds Capcom’s biggest game ever on Steam and its only game to hit one million players, with its closest runner-up being 2021’s Capcom Arcade Stadium, which achieved an all-time peak of 488,791 players.
Monster Hunter Wilds has reached over 1 million concurrent players on Steam! CRAZY!!!
— Genki✨ (@Genki_JPN) February 28, 2025
– 8th game ever to reach over 1M concurrent players on Steam
– 1st Capcom game ever to reach over 1M concurrent players on Steam pic.twitter.com/DCYDqZOsm2
At the time of writing, the game still shows no signs of slowing down, with a 24-hour peak of 1,373,805 players, making it the fifth most-played game ever on the platform, with its total numbers bound to be even greater when considering players from other platforms like PlayStation and Xbox.
Despite its achievements, it has to be noted that the game is not without its issues, at least on PC. It currently sits at a “mixed” rating on Steam, with only 57% of its 53,814 reviews being positive, citing major issues such as poor optimisation and performance even with the latest hardware, a sentiment further echoed by technical analysis specialists like Digital Foundry. Moving forward, the ownership now falls onto Capcom to iron out the game’s rough edges to provide an experience worthy of its fans’ expectations.
Monster Hunter Wilds was released on 28 February for the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
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