RigLoot
Where Winds Meet Rockets Past 100 Million Players
NetEase's free-to-play wuxia epic keeps growing, adding the Hidden Mountain expansion and a fresh flood of newcomers.
Image: · © Everstone / NetEase · Editorial/press use (official Steam media)
Where Winds Meet has gone from ambitious wuxia curiosity to one of the biggest free-to-play launches of the era. Developed by Everstone Studio and published by NetEase, the open-world action RPG went live on PC and PlayStation 5 on November 14, 2025, and it has barely paused for breath since. By February 2026 it had passed 80 million players, and by August 2026 that figure crossed 100 million worldwide, a staggering trajectory for a game less than a year old.
PC has been central to that surge. In its second post-launch week the game peaked at over 250,000 concurrent players on Steam, and it remains completely free-to-play on Windows with cosmetic-only monetization, which has done a lot to earn goodwill in a genre where players are quick to smell pay-to-win.
A Living, Growing World
Set during China's turbulent Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Where Winds Meet casts you as a wandering martial artist exploring regions like Qinghe, Kaifeng and Hexi. The world is enormous and dense with things to do, and the developers have kept feeding it. The Hexi expansion began rolling out in chapters from March 2026, and the Hidden Mountain expansion arrived in July 2026, each adding new regions, weapons and story content to chew through.
The combat is the star. Everstone worked with celebrated martial-arts choreographers, including Yuen Woo-ping, using motion capture to build fight sequences that feel authentically cinematic rather than floaty and generic. Whether you are dueling with a sword, a spear or your bare fists, the flow of it is a genuine highlight and a big reason the game has held such a large audience. Traversal is a joy too, with graceful wall-running, gliding and grappling that let you flow across the landscape as fluidly as you move through a fight.
Momentum on Every Platform
Where Winds Meet has since expanded to mobile in December 2025 and reached Xbox Series X|S on June 7, 2026, all sharing cross-platform progression. That reach is part of why the player counts keep climbing, but PC remains the definitive way to experience the game's scale and visual detail. It even picked up awards-season attention, earning nominations at the D.I.C.E. Awards and a Steam Awards nod.
For all the numbers, the reason to care is simpler: this is a lavish, generous open-world RPG that asks nothing up front and respects your wallet once you are in. The steady expansion cadence means the world is meaningfully bigger now than it was at launch, and there is a real community to play alongside.
If you have been curious about the wuxia game everyone keeps talking about, there is no barrier to entry. You can Play Where Winds Meet free on PC today on Windows and see for yourself why more than 100 million people have already picked up the sword.
