Wuthering Waves Claims 500M First-Week Revenue? Players Do the Math with App Store Data and Get 200M — Everyone Says 'Sure, Just Pay Taxes on That Amount'

500 million RMB in the first week? When that number hit a WeChat article about Wuthering Waves (库洛游戏's open-world gacha), NGA's gaming gossip regulars collectively reached for their calculators. The game had barely been live for a week before a self-media piece declared this "explosive" revenue figure — but instead of applause, it was met with a tidal wave of skepticism.

The article claimed Wuthering Waves saw "sustained growth in user scale" and concluded with a first-week revenue of nearly 500M RMB. The OP was careful to note that all claims about the game were directly quoted from the article, and they hadn't offered any personal opinions — they just wanted to watch the fireworks between believers and doubters.

The moment the post went live, skeptics flooded the comments. The most direct roast came from one user: "Can the people claiming 1 billion, 3 billion, and 5 billion for first-week revenue please fight it out among themselves first? Billions of RMB of difference just casually tossed around — next week it'll be 7 billion." After all, when different sources give wildly different numbers for the same game, that alone is a red flag.

Others attacked from the angle of actual chart rankings. By looking at third-party trackers like Qimai (七麦), Wuthering Waves' position and duration on China's iOS Top Grossing chart was notably weaker than competing titles that have actual public financial reports. Using overseas multi-platform revenue to extrapolate domestic numbers, while ignoring that top competitors have auditable data, was called out as fundamentally flawed methodology.

The most data-driven rebuttal came from a user who ran the actual numbers. Using Wuthering Waves' China iOS revenue of roughly $4.58M from May 23–30 as a base, they applied two different estimation ratios. Under one model (iOS = 1/6 of China total, China = 40% of global), the math gets close to the 500M claim. But under a more commonly accepted model (iOS = 1/3, China = 50%), the figure drops to roughly 200M RMB. "Standard estimate puts it around 200 million," they concluded — making it the most rigorous debunk in the entire thread.

Another commenter used Qimai data for a cross-game comparison: Honkai: Star Rail's first-week numbers were 2.2x Wuthering Waves' launch figures. Applying that ratio to the "500M" claim would mean Star Rail earned 1.14 billion in its first week and 2.77 billion in all of April — yet the well-known data analyst "Guansheng" (观圣) capped Star Rail's April revenue at under 2.5 billion. "This self-media outlet is blowing even more smoke than Guansheng?" the comment quipped.

The thread also resurfaced industry rumors about Kuro Games spending big on paid promotional content (商稿). One user cited a previous industry interview suggesting Kuro allocated massive budgets specifically for buying promotional articles — and this "500M first-week" piece fit the pattern perfectly. The community's verdict was blunt: "Peak journalism school behavior" — counting revenue without discussing massive upfront marketing costs, citing numbers without acknowledging how fast the game fell off the charts.

The most unified chorus, however, was about taxes. "Kuro, please pay taxes based on this number" / "Tax Bureau: Say whatever you want, just report accordingly when filing" / "Claim 5 billion if you feel like it, just make sure to pay up" — three top-voted comments formed a perfect loop of sarcasm that basically captured the entire community's stance: make up whatever numbers you want, but don't expect us to take them seriously.