I Think It’s Neat How One of the Top Games on Steam Is Mahjong With Anime Girls

About a year or two ago, two good IRL friends of mine became obsessed with mahjong. In particular, they were playing this anime mahjong game where you could collect girls as you went. I nearly joined them in the process, because, well, I’m gay, I like anime, and I like anime women. That year, I came so very close to becoming a mahjong VTuber. Life had other plans, but I remembered my friends’ interest in mahjong. It stuck with me. And I promised myself that, one day, I would download the anime mahjong game and finally learn how to play.

So, imagine my surprise when I checked the top games played on Steam and found none other than Mahjong Soul. I quickly contacted my IRL friends (“HELLO!” I wrote in all caps on a random Discord group chat), and confirmed whether they were, in fact, addicted to Mahjong Soul.

“I played it a lot but I took a break,” my one friend told me. “There’s a lot of extra minigame stuff I don’t understand lmao. I just wanna play mahjong and collect cute girls.”

Indeed, I, too, like collecting cute girls. Such is the way of the gay weeb. Perhaps it’s finally time for me to learn mahjong, too.

What is ‘Mahjong Soul’?

On the English-language Steam page for Mahjong Soul, the free-to-play multiplayer title is listed as an “online game that adopted the classic Japanese mahjong gameplay.” Learn riichi mahjong, play with others, and rank up in the world of competitive Mahjong Soul. Along the way, you may collect a cute girl or two. Just don’t expect many for free. While Mahjong Soul is an F2P game, you’re going to need to shell out to collect cute girls. Yes, that means spending money on the game’s gacha system.

Consensus among fans is that Mahjong Soul‘s gacha is fine? Cute girls are cute, yes, but the gacha mechanic has no real bearing on your mahjong gameplay. In the end, it’s just a multiplayer mahjong client with a weeb veneer. Premium purchases aren’t forced on the player, but free pulls are rare as a result. So, if you want to snag cute girls doing cute things, you’ll likely end up spending some cash.

Wait, but the English version isn’t popular…?

“Now, wait a minute, Ana,” my American readers may ask. “If it’s so popular, why aren’t any of my weeb buddies playing the game?” Well, dear American anime fan, you’d be wrong to think that the game is mostly played by Americans — or English speakers, for that matter. Mahjong Soul is a very niche title among English players. How niche? According to SteamDB, the English Steam release launched in July 2024, and it’s since only peaked at 889 players. That makes it the 7,431st most popular game on Steam in terms of all-time player-count peak. Yikes.

But things look a bit different when you take a look at the game’s other Steam client: Its Chinese international version. You see, developer Catfood Studio is Chinese, and according to SteamDB’s Mahjong Soul Chinese page, the game peaked at just over 39,000 players last year. Today, it had a 24-hour peak of 16,740. That placed the international Chinese version squarely into the top 100 games on Steam when I began writing this article.

Granted, Mahjong Soul‘s Chinese release is prone to fluctuating past the 100 mark in the middle of U.S. daytime hours because, well, there’s literally a 12-hour difference between here and Beijing. But still. This is one crazy popular game.

In terms of specifics, fansite “MajSoul Stats” notes that 45.45% of players are Chinese, and 51.28% are Japanese. English players only make up 3.27% of the game. Still, Mahjong Soul dropped in China in 2018 and only saw a broader release in 2019. Both of those dates are prior to the game’s Chinese international launch on Steam in 2020. It’s honestly impressive that the game maintains such a massive following seven years later. Perhaps it’s time for me to collect some anime girls and learn Japanese mahjong.

“I can’t fall asleep anymore. I’m losing my grip on reality,” one Steam player writes. “Whenever I close my eyes and feel myself drifting off, a sudden nightmare of a catgirl screeching ‘RON-NYA!’ terrifies me awake.”

Hm. Okay. Maybe wait on Mahjong Soul still.