Palworld was one of the wildest gaming stories I can remember covering when it rocketed to 2.1 million concurrent players on Steam alone shortly after launch, today remaining the third-highest in the history of the platform. The virality was something we had not seen since another, adjacent type of game, Pokémon GO, which would eventually prove to be quite the IP battle.
Now, Palworld is doing something incredible. After 2.5 years in Early Access, Palworld has now launched its 1.0 version, the “true” release of the game that collects a number of updates over the past few years and adds its biggest patch in history for the launch. While the game is obviously not going to reach 2.1 million again, it has now hit 725,000 concurrent players on Steam this weekend, with numbers boosted by Asian markets during the morning in the US here.
That 725,000 figure means that the second launch of Palworld is now inside the top 15 of Steam launch concurrent peaks ever. To date, there has never been a similar situation of a “relaunch’ hitting a figure like that, though a few expansions may count for forever-hits like PUBG. CSGO also sort of just morphed into its sequel, CS2. Here’s the top 15 list, with Palworld 1.0, meaning the game is on there twice:
PUBG – 3.2 millionBlack Myth: Wukong – 2.4 millionPalworld – 2.1 millionCounter-Strike 2 – 1.8 millionMonster Hunter: Wilds – 1.38 millionLost Ark – 1.32 millionDota 2 – 1.29 millionCyberpunk 2077 – 1.05 millionElden Ring – 953,000Banana – 917,000New World: Aeternum – 913,000Hogwarts Legacy – 879,000Baldur’s Gate 3 – 875,000Battlefield 6 – 745,000Palworld 1.0 – 725,000
Pocketpair has repeatedly said Palworld is not a live service game. That’s true in the sense that it doesn’t have seasons or god forbid, battle passes, but it is a frequently updated game and has retained a solid player base since its initial virality. Pocketpair, however, reports that these numbers are far beyond its expectations, and pre-launch, the game was doing 35,000 nightly players before jumping to 700,000. Wild. One caveat, however, is that this is not all new sales, as many retain their original copies of the game, and Pocketpair has kindly not raised the price of 1.0. Still, obviously it’s doing great, and we rarely, if ever, see something like this in the market, to say nothing of what’s going on over the fence on consoles.
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If the original game found an audience, the far larger and more feature-complete Palworld 1.0 will as well. We’ll see how things progress from here.
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