Free-to-play open-world ‘Where Winds Meet’ surpasses 100 million downloads

Within the past generation or so, we’ve seen a massive rise in the free-to-play market, with games utilising this model increasing in quality; quantity; variety and popularity. One standout release is Where Winds Meet. launched a little under one year ago, the open-world action-RPG has already amassed over 100 million players.

As part of their presence at Gamescom, Where Winds Meet publisher NetEase Games unveiled the next update coming to the popular F2P title – with Chapter 3 of the ‘Hidden Mountain’ story set to drop on the 16th of September.

Alongside this, the team also revealed that Where Winds Meet had surpassed a major milestone – officially reaching 100 million players across PC, consoles and mobile. For context, the game managed to hit 9 million players within its first two weeks on the market.

Since its arrival in late 2025, Where Winds Meet has received plenty of updates, with its biggest being version 2.0 back in July; bringing in tons of additions including a brand new map.

As mentioned, the free-to-play market has grown with each passing year. Even so, the success of Where Winds Meet is notable, with it hitting the 100 million mark faster than the original Call of Duty: Warzone was able to back in 2020-21.

With the ‘Hidden Mountain’ narrative set to conclude soon, it will be interesting to see what’s in store for the game in the long-run.

KitGuru says: Have you tried Where Winds Meet? How does it compare to other similar free-to-play offerings? Let us know down below.

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