Palworld's astonishing success swelled over the weekend, as survival and game-making game “Pokémon with Guns” topped the list of most-played games on Steam and sold millions more copies.
Palworld launched on January 19 in Early Access on Steam as well as on Xbox and Windows PC, day and date with Game Pass. Palworld overtook CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 to set the fifth-highest number of concurrent players on Steam with 1,291,967 online at the same time on Valve's platform. Palworld is currently the most played game on Steam, beating out giants Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG. It is the sixth game ever to reach 1 million concurrent copies on Steam.
There are a number of Steam records that go along with this success on Steam. Palworld is now the most played Japanese game of all time on Steam (its developer, PocketPair, is based in Tokyo), ahead of the previous record holder, Elden Ring. Palworld is the second most played paid game of all time on Steam, behind PUBG's perhaps insurmountable concurrent number of 3,257,248, which was set before the battle royale game became free-to-play.
while, The pocket said Palworld sold more than five million in about three days, with 86,000 copies sold per hour. For context, Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man sold 3.3 million copies in its first three days on sale, Sony Santa Monica Studio's God of War sold 3.1 million copies in three days, and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us 2 sold 4 million copies in Same time period. . Palworld has sold out faster than the fastest selling PS4 exclusive ever in a three-day sales window. All this despite being available day one on Game Pass.
While Palworld has been an overwhelming success, it is not without controversy. IGN reported last week how some Pokémon fans were taking to social media to point out the striking similarities between World's Pals and the Pokémon themselves. Elsewhere, the Xbox version still lags behind the Steam version in terms of key features and updates. Palworld's massive launch has made its servers suffer as well.
Check out IGN's Palworld Early Access review to see what we thought.
Wesley is IGN's UK news editor. You can find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].