A $3 game with “Mostly Negative” reviews sits at #5 on Steam’s Top Sellers chart, pulling nearly 30,000 concurrent players. Welcome to BidKing.

The numbers make no sense. BidKing, from developer MindSurge Network & Games and publisher Elegoose Games, holds strong on the chart as of April 21 with 29,796 concurrent players. Its review score? Thirty-three percent positive. The top review, from someone with 10.6 hours played, reads “Game of the year 2026!” — on a negative rating. The sarcasm is the point.

The audience isn’t English-speaking. Among 13 supported languages listed on Steambase, only Chinese Simplified includes full audio. A lone English-language positive review says: “Don’t mind me, just an English comment passing by~” Server maintenance was scheduled in UTC+8 — Chinese Standard Time. Steambase lists a co-publisher, LingZhu Tech Ltd., reinforcing the China connection.

BidKing launched April 15 as a multiplayer tactical auction game: read opponents, lowball on valuables, bluff rivals into overpaying for junk. It shipped with in-app purchases and a day-one Deluxe Expansion Pack DLC. A demo attracted attention during Steam Next Fest in February 2026, landing at #41 on the most-played demos list, according to GameGrin.

The full release has been a mess. The developer posted a “Server Recovery Announcement” on April 20 acknowledging “server-related issues” after what the announcement called emergency treatment. One player reported that latency made the game unplayable: “can’t even place a bid.” The review count has since surged past 4,500 — still holding at 33% positive.

So who’s buying a broken game at this volume? Most likely a community-driven viral moment — possibly a Chinese streamer whose audience piled in regardless of quality. At $2.99, meme momentum overrides review scores. Steam’s Top Sellers chart tracks revenue, not quality. And right now, enough people are paying three bucks to be in on whatever this is.

Sources