Wuthering Waves: How Kuro Games Survived a Rough Launch to Win Fans

On its launch day in May 2024, the studio behind Wuthering Waves was already apologising. Players had found that changing their phone's clock unlocked content that was not meant to be out yet, audio went missing after an early patch, and some PC players could not get past a "Fatal Error" screen. Kuro Games said sorry on 23 May 2024 and promised in-game compensation.

Eighteen months later, the same game won the fan-voted Players' Voice award at The Game Awards 2025. In between, Kuro Games rebuilt Wuthering Waves into one of the most respected anime action games on phones, PC and consoles. It is a rare live-service comeback, and a story about how fast this genre now moves.

The studio from Guangzhou

Kuro Games is based in Guangzhou, in southern China. Before Wuthering Waves, it was known for Punishing: Gray Raven, a fast-paced 3D action game with a dark science-fiction story about humanity fighting a robotic plague. That game's combat, built around quick dodges, combos and colour-coded skill orbs, earned a devoted following and became the foundation for Kuro's bigger project.

Tencent is a major investor in the studio, and reports in 2023 said it had become the majority shareholder. Kuro first showed Wuthering Waves in May 2022, pitching it as an open-world action RPG for phones and PC with combat deeper than its rivals.

What kind of game is it?

Players control the Rover, a wanderer who wakes with no memory in Solaris-3, a world wrecked by a disaster called the Lament. You explore, climb and glide across a large open world, and fight with a team of three characters you swap between mid-combo.

Its signature system is Echoes. Defeated monsters can be absorbed and turned into equipment, and many can be summoned in battle or used to move around the map. Collecting and upgrading Echoes is the long-term hobby of most players, and it gives the open world a reason to keep fighting.

Characters are unlocked through gacha "convenes", with the usual pity counters guaranteeing a featured character within a set number of pulls. Our pity explainer shows how those systems compare.

The long climb back

After the launch problems, Kuro moved fast. A steady flow of patches fixed performance and bugs, and big updates widened the game's world:

• Version 2.0 arrived on 2 January 2025 with the region of Rinascita, a sunny Mediterranean-style land with a new flying mode, and launched the game on PlayStation 5 the same day.
• A macOS version followed on 27 March 2025, and a Steam release was set for 29 April 2025.
• Version 3.0 opened Lahai-Roi and added an Expedition Motorbike for travel.
• In December 2025, a combat feature called Tune Break added another layer to fights.
• Xbox Series X|S joined the platform list in July 2026.

The numbers and the trophies

Critics have been positive without being dazzled. The PS5 version holds a Metacritic score of 76, and Famitsu gave it 34 out of 40. Players have been warmer. Beyond its Players' Voice win in 2025, the game won Google Play's Best Ongoing award and three Taipei Game Show Gold Awards.

Commercially, it is a solid hit. In September 2025, Tencent executive Steven Ma said Wuthering Waves was one of six titles from the previous year to pass the company's "evergreen" benchmark, which requires millions of daily players and annual gross receipts above 4 billion yuan.

Why it matters

Wuthering Waves shows that a bad launch is no longer the end in live-service gaming. Players gave Kuro a second chance because the studio listened, fixed things quickly and kept adding content worth playing. It also proves there is room for more than one giant in the anime open-world genre that Genshin Impact created (our Genshin story).

Our take: if you enjoy action games where timing and combos matter more than stats, Wuthering Waves is the most combat-focused game in its class. Start on PC or PS5 if you can, then carry your save to your phone.