Mewgenics sells 1 million copies in just 1 week, far more than its creators expected: 'We both got a bit blindsided by this'

Mewgenics Desert Heat Wave: A blue cat next to a road in the desert waving, stood next to a dead snake. — (Image credit: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel)

That sure didn't take long: Just one week after release, the bizarre cat-breeding simulator Mewgenics has surpassed one million copies sold.

Word of the major milestone came from Mewgenics co-creator Tyler Glaiel on X, who posted a simple, to-the-point message that was apparently created by fan artist Whom:

meow - one million copies sold!!! — (Image credit: Tyler Glaiel (Twitter))

The message was later retweeted by Mewgenics' other co-creator, Edmund McMillen.

"Some fun stats," Glaiel wrote in a follow-up post. "Mew had ~400k wishlists before reviews came out. Shot up to ~600k after reviews / before release. For those saying its success was expected based on pedigree, week 1 sales for games are usually a fraction of wishlists. So we both got a bit blindsided by this haha.

"I am very glad you all enjoy it."

Players do indeed seem to enjoy it. Despite some controversy surrounding some of the Mewgenics voice cast, the game has put up enviable concurrent player numbers on Steam, peaking at more than 115,000 and currently sitting at over 96,500—not bad at all for a Tuesday afternoon.

That audience will presumably continue to expand, as Glaiel said simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian language support are in the works, and more might be on the way. McMillen also said over the weekend that console versions of Mewgenics are in development, and DLC is also coming, although that's going to be a ways out.

Patches are also on the way, although Glaiel advised players to temper their early expectations. "I caught a cold in the wake of the release so I'm taking it a bit easy," he wrote. "First patch will be mostly minor bugfixes + some easy little things that are unlikely to cause other issues. Expected towards the end of the week now.

"First patch will not include any significant balance changes. There are one or two things I have on notice for future patches (enjoy Merciless infinites while you can), but for the most part we aren't super interested in doing any sweeping balance passes outside of DLC."

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

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