Monster Hunter Wilds has debuted to record Steam player numbers, shattering previous records for both the Monster Hunter franchise and Capcom as a whole on the platform.
Per SteamDB, the game currently has 1,267,944 concurrent players, and that number is rapidly climbing, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Monster Hunter Wilds broke the 1.5 million mark later in the day, when people start coming home from work, school, and their various other obligations.
It probably goes without saying that this represents an absolutely colossal leap up from Monster Hunter‘s previous Steam record, which was achieved by Monster Hunter World‘s 334,684 peak player count back in 2018. (Incidentally, World still has 34,745 players on Steam at time of writing.)
Of course, we’re not counting the players who flocked to the first Monster Hunter Wilds open beta, which was held back in November and which also achieved a higher peak player count than World did. Still, that was essentially a demo, and this is the real thing.
Not only has Monster Hunter Wilds broken records for its franchise on Steam, but it’s also shattered previous records for Capcom as a whole. The game has shot to the top of Capcom’s Steam charts, beating out both Capcom Arcade Stadium compilations, as well as games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 and the Resident Evil 4 remake.
Capcom’s new game is now the seventh most-played game of all time on Steam; it’s still got a ways to go to catch up with games like Palworld, Black Myth: Wukong, and PUBG: Battlegrounds, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see it scale those lofty heights over the weekend.
With that said, Palworld might have Wilds beat for now, but developer Pocketpair knew how successful the game would be; yesterday, it announced it would give its staff the day off today because it anticipated a lot of employees calling in sick (almost certainly to play Wilds).
It’s worth noting that this Steam number naturally doesn’t take into account console players. I really wouldn’t be surprised if Monster Hunter Wilds turns out to have sold two or three million copies on launch day alone.
You can check out Monster Hunter Wilds right now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Make sure to read our Tyler’s review here to see why it’s worth the hype.
