China’s hottest new game is a wuxia universe created by an amateur coder

Imagine Dungeons & Dragons and The Sims set against a background of Chinese mythology and wuxia tales.

That is an apt description of The Scroll of Taiwu, on track to break sales records since its release on the Steam games platform on September 21. It took just three days to sell 100,000 copies, a week to triple the number, and 15 days to reach 600,000, according to its developers.

During a weeklong public holiday in China that ended on October 7, The Scroll of Taiwu ranked among the top five most played games on Steam, with a peak of some 72,000 users playing simultaneously. Last week the Chinese-only game still had a peak simultaneous player number of 61,000, surpassing big names like Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

The unexpected success of the title highlights the growth of original Chinese indie games as hard core players look for alternatives to the similar looking mobile titles dominating the market. China’s indie game developers are relying on US platform Steam, which has not officially launched in China but is not blocked by Chinese censors either, to sell their titles in the country.

Valve Corp’s Steam has an estimated 20 million Chinese users playing games that would otherwise have to be approved by regulators for domestic use – a process that has been stalled for months as Beijing tightens scrutiny of the sector. While big companies like Tencent have used Steam to publish titles overseas, independent labels are using it as a workaround to reach Chinese players and monetise their games amid the regulatory crackdown.