Monster Hunter Wilds Is Already Breaking Records Just Hours After Launch, Beating Baldur's Gate 3 & Elden Ring

The highly anticipated launch of Monster Hunter Wilds isn't just a success for developer and publisher Capcom – it's a smash hit, setting records on Steam. Monster Hunter has long been a beloved series, but it's only risen to prominence in recent years, with Wilds already reaching unprecedented heights on launch day. The creature-battling action RPG has even sured recent phenomena like Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3, cracking the top 10 for all-time highest concurrent players on Steam.

Monster Hunter Wilds just launched today, February 28, but has already reached a peak concurrent player count of a staggering 1,307,976, according to SteamDB. Recent beloved RPGs Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 accomplished similarly impressive numbers, but both have been easily sured by Wilds.

Exceeding 1.3 million concurrent players is the sixth-best all-time concurrent player count in Steam history, behind PUBG: Battlegrounds, Black Myth: Wukong, Palworld, Counter-Strike 2, and Lost Ark. The last mainline game in the series was Monster Hunter: World, which reached an all-time peak of 334,684, almost one million players fewer.

Monster Hunter Wilds Is Already A Numbers Success

One Of The Most Popular Games Ever Released On Steam

The release of Monster Hunter Wilds was eagerly awaited, but such incredible player numbers on launch day exceeded expectations. Accumulating one million more concurrent players than World ever had is astounding, considering World is the series entry generally regarded as Monster Hunter's big break. Wilds is also well above the performance of Monster Hunter Rise, the series' most recent spin-off. Rise crucially released on the Nintendo Switch first, before coming to PC almost a year later.

Steam is notably only a single platform; Monster Hunter Wilds was also released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, so the total concurrent player count is conceivably much higher than 1.3 million across all platforms.

Wilds' concurrent player peak is well above the likes of Elden Ring's 953,426 peak concurrent players and Baldur's Gate 3's 875,343, and both of those titles are considered among the best games of all time. They were both notable pop culture phenomena, seeing great community through word-of-mouth. Interestingly, Monster Hunter Wilds reached its current peak around 14:00 UTC, or 9:00am Eastern Time, on a Friday. This is late in the evening in Japan, where Capcom has a sizable audience, but Wilds may reach even higher concurrent player numbers over the weekend as players in the U.S. hop in.

What Fans Are Saying

Steam Reviews Are Mixed

Zoh Shia spreads its wings and rears back its head in its intro cutscene from Monster Hunter Wilds.

Despite the incredible statistics, Monster Hunter Wilds is receiving considerable flak from reviews on Wilds has widespread reports of crashing and poor performance generally. Some of the performance issues were known ahead of release, concerning the prospective playerbase that tried one of Wilds' open betas. Capcom released a benchmark tool on the Monster Hunter website to hopefully mitigate concerns regarding PC specs, but the Steam reviews are filled with complaints of bugs and poor optimization.

Key art from Monster Hunter Wilds shows a player character riding a Seikret, looking out at a vast landscape.

Monster Hunter Wilds Review: Heading In A Bold New Direction, With One Or Two Missteps

Monster Hunter Wilds is a lushly beautiful and ceaselessly thrilling entry in the series, but its performance and on-rails story can be distracting.

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Performance was an issue with one of Capcom's last major releases as well, the otherwise wonderful Dragon's Dogma 2. Both it and Monster Hunter Wilds run on Capcom's proprietary RE Engine, but Wilds' unprecedented scope for the Monster Hunter series may also be a contributing factor – it's the first title in the franchise to be fully open-world. Capcom clearly has a hit on its hands with Monster Hunter Wilds, but subpar performance may jeopardize its ability to keep this incredible launch-day momentum going forward.

Sources: SteamDB, Jake Lucky/Twitter, Steam, Monster Hunter