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Palworld released on January 19, 2024. Within eight hours, it sold 1 million copies. Within 24 hours, Palworld sold over 2 million copies. Within 40 hours, it surpassed 3 million copies sold. Now, with the game only being out for roughly three days, Palworld sales have surpassed 5 million copies sold.
Not only has Palworld sold over 5 million copies, but this figure apparently does not include those that are playing the game through Game Pass on either Xbox or PC.
When we reported that Palworld sales surpassed 2 million copies this past Saturday, it was accompanied by the news that the peak concurrent player count for the Steam version of the game hit a high of 855,425. That number placed it in the eighth position on Steam's all-time peak concurrent player chart. Since then, Palworld saw an increase in their top concurrent player count on Steam to the tune of 1,570,002 people playing the game at the same time. This new peak concurrent player count jumped Palworld up to the third spot on Steam's all-time peak concurrent player chart.
As it stands right now, Palworld is only bested by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive/2 and PUBG: Battlegrounds for having the most people online playing the game at the same time. This also means that Palworld blew past games like Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, and Dota 2 in its rise to that third position. Palworld's peak playercount is about 230,000 behind Counter-Strike and about 1.7 million behind PUBG. While those PUBG numbers seem quite untouchable for any game, it is entirely possible that Palworld could surpass Counter-Strike's peak.
Hopefully this news of 5 million copies sold isn't already outdated by the time I actually get this post live.
Palworld began life looking like a "Pokémon with guns" from its early promotional materials. However, the game can best be described as "Ark with Pokémon instead of dinosaurs (but may have some dinosaur-like creatures)". Palworld is also only in Early Access right now and plans to remain there for about a period of one year. The developers at Pocketpair are already working on things like crossplay between Xbox and PC, Steam Workshop support, and even the possibility of PvP.
You may have also seen some social media discussions crop up over the weekend talking about the similarities between Palworld's Pals and Pokémon's, well, Pokémon. Some of the creature designs in Palworld do seem to be very, very similar to Pokémon or an amalgamation of different Pokemon fused together. Whatever side of that aisle you stand on matters not because the developers at Pocketpair aren't too worried about Nintendo's lawyers coming after them.
Pocketpair isn't exactly shy about wearing their "inspirations" on their sleaves. Their upcoming game, Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse, seems to be heavily inspired by Hollow Knight. Their previous title, Craftopia, looks to be heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom.
There's not a lot of honour left, insane monetisation schemes, expendable devs being fired by the thousands, ceo's destroying companies and floating away on golden parachutes, short sighted acquisitions, unfinished products, DRM hell, engine makers trying to screw over every customer they have, fresh ideas being buried under live service schemes, lying, cheating and stealing sound normal in an environment like this and when it happens so often it's hard to care, i can't keep track of how many lawsuits are ongoing it's crazy.
They managed to cobble something together that appeals to people and it works and is fun, so you might as well enjoy it too because tomorrow some more disappointing or heartbreaking news will be reported.
2024 is here and it's going about the same as 2023, except someone took a swipe at Pokemon.