Black Myth: Wukong might have lost the highly coveted title in The Game Awards, but in turn, that has hugely bumped the player count.

After the release of Black Myth: Wukong, everyone became quite sure that the first AAA title from Game Science was going to win the Game of the Year award in 2024. The game sold 20 million copies in a short time and set an example for every developer on how to make a perfect video game.

Black Myth: Wukong failed to win the Game of the Year award in 2024. | Credit: Game Science.

Despite all of these accolades, Astro Bot was eventually crowned with the most coveted title in the gaming world, shocking the entire gaming fraternity. Again, TGA 2024 proved that the event was more of a status-maintaining act rather than actually acknowledging true excellence. However, losing this award has actually done a lot of good for Black Myth: Wukong.

Black Myth: Wukong achieves huge player surge after Game of the Year loss

Currently, there are more than 100k playing the game. | Credit: Game Science.

Black Myth: Wukong might have failed to clinch the prestigious award, but in turn, it has resulted in a staggering player surge in the game itself. According to SteamDB, Black Myth: Wukong knocked off an all-time peak of over 2 million players 4 months ago when the game was released.

However, the game was able to maintain a steady player base of around 75k after that peak. But on 14th December, just one day after TGA 2024, the player count surged over 200k.

Not only that, this huge surge has been able to maintain the concurrent player count to 134k players right now, which is quite impressive for a single-player game, that too, four months after its release. Actually, the hate against Astro Bot winning the title has shifted a lot of players towards the Game Science RPG and has worked as negative publicity for the game.

Black Myth: Wukong was bound to win the highly coveted award this year. The game broke all the Steam records by doubling Cyberpunk 2077‘s peak player count, but it also showed Eastern excellence to the Western studios. Not only just stunning visuals, but the combat mechanics made every game look like a tutorial level in front of it.

The Game Science CEO couldn’t accept the defeat

Astro Bot prevails as the best game of 2024. | Credit: Sony.

Despite winning the Best Action Game and fan-voted Players Voice, Game Science CEO Feng Ji couldn’t hold himself from taking a dig at The Game Awards. Ji took to the Chinese social media platform Weibo and expressed his disappointment about losing the highly wanted award.

The other two wins were “gratifying”, but that never quenched his thirst for the main award. The exact tone of the seven-paragraph rant can be difficult to parse at times. Here’s what he stated (Translated through ChatGPT, so humor, sarcasm, and any other linguistic parlor trick can’t be detected correctly):

Yet, I must admit, there’s a sense of loss and regret. More than anything, though, there’s a letting go of illusions. The games nominated this year were all exceptional, but honestly, I still can’t figure out what the criteria were for Game of the Year. I feel like I came all the way here for nothing!

He’s absolutely correct though; it’s terrible if you’re eligible for an award, you truly believe you should win it, and you truly want to win it, but you don’t. According to game writer Alanah Pearce, who was sitting close to the Black Myth: Wukong team at The Game Awards, one of the developers was in fact crying when Astro Bot won Game of the Year, indicating that the dev team took the defeat quite hard.

Which game has got your vote?