Escape From Duckov has erupted into Steam’s top-played list this week, and the spike looks mainly driven by Chinese players rather than a global overnight smash. The quirky top-down extraction shooter from Team Soda is a paid single-player release that is punching far above its weight on concurrent charts.
Data on SteamDB shows the game’s player count spikes in China’s evening hours, which correspond to late Pacific evening times for Western audiences, and roughly 64% of the Steam reviews are written in Simplified Chinese. That pattern fits a now-familiar trend: games climb the global charts primarily because the Chinese market is active at a given time, rather than because of an evenly distributed worldwide surge. The SteamDB charts are visible on the game’s app page.
It isn’t a free-to-play live service pushing the numbers either. Escape From Duckov is a roughly $18 single-player-focused extraction shooter, and its sudden climb is notable because most recent breakout Steam hits in the top five were either huge online multiplayer launches or low-cost multiplayer meme games.
Publisher Bilibili’s involvement probably explains part of the boost. Bilibili operates a popular livestreaming and video platform in China, and having that promotional reach domestically can send a release into the stratosphere there very quickly. The publisher relationship lines up with the Steam review language split and the daily play windows seen on SteamDB.
The game’s performance has already attracted attention across coverage and tracking sites, and CPG previously noted Duckov’s early commercial momentum, including a half-million-sales milestone in its first three days. That earlier coverage also explored how the game’s Tarkov-like trappings are reframed into a more approachable single-player loop.
Player reaction from outside China has been slower to build, but the game is getting plaudits for its loop of looting, crafting, and extract-style tension, and for being more than a one-note meme. Expect the discussion around Duckov to hinge on whether the title maintains Western interest once China’s peak hours subside and initial promotional pushes ease.
For more on the game’s early statistics and context, see CPG’s pieces on Duckov’s player counts, the game’s early sales, and our first impressions of its Tarkov-like-but-not-Tarkov design.
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