Monster Hunter Wilds smashes Capcom’s records on Steam, but the players aren’t happy

It feels like only yesterday when Capcom gave us our first glimpse into what the future of Monster Hunter looks like, and now the launch day is here. People all over the world have called in sick to play the hit hunting game, and the current player statistics reflect a huge amount of excitement for the game. However, you’d be forgiven for thinking the launch was a flop; the Steam reviews have been pouring in, and they’re not happy.

Monster Hunter Wilds sets a new record for Capcom

First, the good. At the time of writing, the SteamDB page for Monster Hunter Wilds states that the peak number of players playing the game on Steam was 1,307,976. That was set an hour ago, so there’s a very good chance that number has increased by the time you’ve read this passage.

In a vacuum, that’s an excellent launch, but it gets even better when you compare that to the peak player counts for Monster Hunter World and Rise. Over its 6.5 years of Steam history, Monster Hunter World’s highest player count ever reached was 334,684, and Rise got 231,360. Even if Wilds never surpasses its current peak count, that’s still a huge improvement over its predecessors, and someone at Capcom must be feeling very, very happy.

The Monster Hunter Wilds players, however, are not happy

Now, the bad. I haven’t hopped into Monster Hunter Wilds yet (both my hunting friends and ​​​​​​​my Editor-in-Chief would kill me if I did), but people have been reporting worse performance than the beta, which feels against what a beta should be doing. At the time of writing, Monster Hunter Wilds has a 47% positive rating, which plants it firmly in the “Mixed” range but is teetering a little closer than I’d like to the “Mostly Negative” bracket which starts at 39%.

Games like Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky have taught us that games can have a rocky start but eventually flourish into something amazing, so this is by no means a death knell for the game. However, it also taught developers that they can release a game in an unpolished state and just buff out the glitches later. And given how well Wilds has sold in spite of its performance issues, it looks to be a lesson that AAA developers aren’t going to forget anytime soon.

Players may be divided over Monster Hunter Wilds, but our handsome and lovely friends over on our sister site TheGamer love it. They recently gave Monster Hunter Wilds a shining 4.5/5 in their review, and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.