1.4 billion inhabitants and not a few of them are playing a game, Black Myth: Wukong. This beats China the rest of the world on Steam single-handedly.
Which game is meant? Black Myth: Wukong attracts true masses in front of the screen with its scenario in the Far East and the legends that almost every child knows there. However, the download makes the internet lines of Steam servers glow first.
How much has been downloaded? According to official data from Steam, around 55 percent of all data downloaded from Steam servers between August 16 and 23 came from China. A total of 1.2 exabytes of data volume landed on storage media in China during this period.
The entire rest of the world, including the USA, which account for about 12 percent of traffic share, lags behind China. By the way, Germany stands at a meager 2.5 percent.
Update on August 25: Meanwhile, it’s even almost 57 percent and 1.4 exabytes, measured from August 18 to 25.
Black Myth: Wukong causes glowing lines from Steam
How much is 1.2 exabytes? One exabyte (EB) comprises 1,000 petabytes or one billion gigabytes (GB). The Chinese downloaded this 1.2 EB at an average of 105.8 megabits per second (Mbps). Our download speed lags significantly at 68.9 Mbps per second. The USA at least beats China here with 117 Mbps.
How do we know that Black Myth: Wukong is to blame? There are no official numbers from Valve on this, but clear indications can be found. For example, if you look at the player data on steamdb for the game, you quickly see where the majority of players are sitting in front of the computer.
The peaks of the daily rising and falling curve are reached around 2 PM UTC, which is in the middle of the night for us in Germany, but evening for China. Recently, about 2.5 million were playing at the peak – likely a significant portion of them Chinese.
This is also supported by an analysis by Simon Carless from Gamediscovergo: Asia, especially China, is the stronghold for Black Myth: Wukong. The western world is likely quite insignificant for the developers purely from the numbers. He estimates based on studies of the language used and information from users that around 90 percent of all players of the title come from China. You can find the graphics behind this link to X.
The thickest internet line – at least in the context of research – is currently found in Japan, so not far from China. There, scientists have achieved almost unbelievable results by reaching download rates that are hard to find elsewhere: With the fastest internet connection in the world, you can download Baldur’s Gate 3 or even the new CoD in just a few milliseconds
