Since it released on Jan. 19, Palworld has done nothing but exponentially grow its audience through a mix of players enjoying the game or various viral controversies on social media. Regardless of the cause, its playerbase is now so large that it’s lapping every other game on Steam.
As of Jan. 24 at 9am CT, Palworld hit a peak of 2,018,905 concurrent players on Steam—becoming just the second game to ever hit the two million player mark on the platform, according to SteamDB. It also leapfrogged Counter-Strike 2 to become the second most-played game ever by all-time peaks, now trailing only PUBG’s record of 3,257,248 players set in January 2018.
At that 2,018,905 concurrent peak, Palworld had more than double the active users of Steam’s second most-played game at the time, which was CS2 at around 943,000. It has likewise been crushing the other mainstay games in Steam’s top 10, like Dota 2, PUBG, Apex Legends, Naraka: Bladepoint, and GTA V, hovering at an average of 990,325 concurrent players since launch, according to Steam Charts—though that is a very small sample size.
To match that player count, Palworld has sold seven million copies in just five days, which Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley has since confirmed is only counting the Steam numbers. Since the game is also available on Xbox Series X/S to purchase (and via Game Pass), the actual sales and player total could be much higher.
All this success has come within a week of Palworld’s launch, and the developers at Pocketpair are scrambling to keep up with sales that have “far exceeded the development team’s expectations.” In the latest update about future plans for the game, the team noted it will focus on addressing “critical issues” first before working on the rest of its content roadmap, which includes the potential addition of PvP, new locations, and more.
