(Yicai) Aug. 21 -- Black Myth: Wukong, an action role-playing game developed by China's Game Science, has set the second-highest record for the number of people concurrently playing on US gaming platform Steam. Shares of its publisher Zhejiang Publishing & Media surged by the daily limit for the second straight trading day.

The share price [SHA:601921] of Hangzhou-based Zhejiang Publishing, which is mainly responsible for the game’s content reviews and publishing applications, soared 10 percent for the second day in a row to close at CNY10.53 (USD1.48) apiece.

Other gaming firms' shares surged then fell. Perfect World [SHE:002624] soared as much as 8.8 percent, before closing up 3.8 percent at CNY7.91 (USD1.11). Electronic Soul Network Technology [SHA:603258] gained 4.4 percent in the morning but closed down 0.7 percent at CNY15.93.

There were more than one million people playing Black Myth: Wukong, which was seven years in development, within an hour of it going live on Steam yesterday. This later increased to 2.2 million, second only to PUBG’s peak of 3.2 million people in 2018.

“I had many discussions with the game developers about how to increase the game's flexibility and tolerance,” Feng Ji, founder of Shenzhen-based Game Science, said yesterday. "We aimed to make the key foes worthy adversaries but did not want to make them indomitable. The game is not easy but it is not as hard to win as you might think,” he added.

"Life is much harder than a game," he added. “Don't be scared off by these paper tigers."

A standard edition of Black Myth: Wukong costs CNY268 (USD38) and a deluxe edition costs CNY328 in China. Overseas, the standard and deluxe editions are available for USD59.99 and USD69.99, respectively.

Already over 4.5 million copies of the game have been sold, generating CNY1.5 billion (USD210.2 million), according to professional forecasts. This eclipses the cost to develop the game which was roughly CNY400 million (USD56.1 million).

Black Myth: Wukong is a major turning point for China's console game industry and also a key step for Chinese games' globalization, US investment bank Goldman Sachs said in its latest research note. It will also stimulate investments in China's gaming industry, especially in AAA games.

The game has also attracted some criticism as it lured a lot of people who hadn't played AAA games before but decided to have a try. These players were unable to properly assess the difficulties, which meant they died repeatedly and had a bad experience. Also, the game has high computer hardware specifications and some players encountered problems when their computers took time to respond or unexpectedly shut down.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor