Chinese games have been a thing for a very long time, but they have only really started to explode internationally in the last few years. Once upon a time, a game might have millions of active players in China while being a completely unknown entity outside the country; nowadays, those types of titles still exist, but they are far from the norm.
In just this decade, we have seen Chinese gacha games blow up and reshape the free-to-play market on PC, consoles, and mobile. We have seen a single-player game set records on Steam, a feat that might be repeated by its successor, Black Myth: Zhong Kui, whenever it launches. Chinese games are not only here to stay, but they are also here to dominate.
1
Genshin Impact
The Chinese Game That Defined Modern Gacha
It really cannot be understated the impact that miHoYo’s HoYoverse has had on gaming on the whole, particularly Genshin Impact. The open-world free-to-play game not only took the world by storm when it launched in 2020, but it also garnered almost universal acclaim for its simple but addictive gameplay loop, gorgeous visuals, consistent content evolution, and (naturally) character designs. The gacha mechanic was the thing that kept people coming back (and spending), fueling a live-service model that many other publishers have seemingly sought to replicate, but almost never to the same effect.
Whether you love or hate it, Genshin Impact‘s influence cannot be denied, and it is by far the Chinese game with the furthest reach and longest sustained success, at least worldwide. By 2022, the mobile version had already surpassed $3 billion; according to Activeplayer.io, Genshin Impact currently averages more than 3.5 million daily players, along with 19 million over a month. It was such a massive juggernaut that miHoYo’s subsequent releases, Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, were guaranteed hits when they dropped, and all three games are still flying high years after their debuts.
In fact, without Genshin Impact being an absurd success, we might not have gotten the following 2026 Chinese game.
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2
Neverness to Everness
The Smash Hit Of 2026
Neverness to Everness is the gacha scene’s current hotness, and it is safe to say that Hotta Studio’s project has hit the ground running. Going by Resident-Bridge2731’s Reddit thread that translates an interview with the developer, the game earned more than $14 million in revenue in its first day, with most of that coming from PC and PS5 rather than mobile.
Roughly two weeks after its release, Neverness to Everness‘ total revenue has shot up to more than $500+ million, along with more than 30 million downloads, according to Gacharevenue. Anyway you look at it, Neverness to Everness is the biggest release of 2026 so far, and it will likely stay that way until maybe Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out. It probably helps that it is a pretty darn great game that has a fresh urban setting, 15 strong unlockable characters (right now), top-notch cutscenes, and fantastic combat.
3
Honor of Kings
The Biggest Mobile Game In The World (And By A Distance)
Honor of Kings will not be a recognizable name to those who only game on PC or console, but trust me when I say that this is one of the biggest games in the world, and it has been like that for the best part of a decade. While Honor of Kings would not launch globally with that name until 2024, an international version called Arena of Valor came out in 2017. In 2019, SensorTower reported that Honor of Kings and Arena of Valor had already brought in more than $4.5 billion, including $200 million from outside of China. Since then, it has continued to be the biggest earner in the mobile space, a position the MOBA easily held in 2025.
Now, admittedly, Honor of Kings isn’t quite as big in the United States as it is in other parts of the world, but that doesn’t take anything away from its success; furthermore, the global version has been nothing short of a massive success. According to Appmagic, Honor of Kings is currently the fifth top grossing APP in the world, just under TikTok, ChatGPT, Google One, and YouTube. Seriously, that is absurd.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)
4
Black Myth: Wukong
One Of The Biggest Single-Player Games Of The 2020s
We have mostly talked about free-to-play releases so far, an area that China really seems to have a stranglehold over. However, in recent years, we have seen a steady increase in successful single-player Chinese games, with Wuchang: Fallen Feathers being one of the most famous examples due to debuting on Game Pass and a recent stint on PS Plus.
As successful as that Soulslike game was, it merely made a splash compared to the tidal wave brought on by Black Myth: Wukong, a game that ranked in Steam’s top sellers for 2024 despite releasing in August. During its launch windows, it peaked at over $2.4 million players on just Steam, the second-highest record of all time. Game Science’s Journey to the West epic spent its first few months just hitting milestone after milestone. Within about 3 weeks, it had already earned $800 million, comfortable earning back its estimated budget of $70 million. By January 2025, Black Myth: Wukong had sold 25 million copies.
Even now, nearly two years after its debut, Black Myth: Wukong still routinely pulls more than 15K concurrent players on Steam, which is an absurd figure for a single-player game.
5
Where Winds Meet
The New Standard For Free-To-Play Games
Yeah, we are back to free-to-play games, but Where Winds Meet is an entirely different beast from Genshin Impact or Neverness to Everness. A love letter to Chinese history and mythology, the wuxia action RPG arguably set a new standard for how to handle these types of release, as it delivers a fantastic single-player experience that can be enjoyed relatively freely (as long as you don’t mind waiting on occasion). The multiplayer portion is separate but also provides the playerbase with something to do while waiting for new content to drop, which has been coming fast since the game’s global release. Rather than focusing on collecting characters, Where Winds Meet focuses entirely on giving players as many unique ways to interact with its world, be it through its distinct lifestyles or environmental combat.
Like most Chinese games, Where Winds Meet was already a gigantic success before making its international debut, and it carried the momentum of the domestic market into its global run. Besides having a mostly positive reception on Steam and mobile devices, it was also nominated for D.I.C.E.’s Mobile Game of the Year award, showing that it is not just a commercial success but also a critical one.
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