Nobody is surprised thatPalworldturned into a big hit. Gamers love Pokémon, guns, and surviving. It should come as no big surprise that a game thatcompetently mixes those elementsis doing well.
What feels completely wild, however, is this game from a mostly unknown companyseeminglybecoming a record-shattering hit overnight.
Palworld‘s official English-language Twitter account has just tweeted a thank you note for Steam users who madePalworldthe game with more paid concurrent players out ofany game in the history of the platform.
#Palworldhas the highest concurrent player count of any paid game in the history of Steam!We can’t believe it!Thank you SO much to everyone. We really can not thank you enough.The team is hard at work making Palworld even better as we speak!#Pocketpairpic.twitter.com/tYHfHWLqM9
The numbers are amazing, but that’s not quite accurate
Palworld,a game that came pretty much out of nowhere, did manage to beat huge company-backed juggernauts such asCyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring,and even 2024’s best-selling game. Yes, that one about the wizard school that’s based on the works of that questionable writer inexplicably became thebest-selling game of the past year.
Those are exceptional numbers, yes, though the world-record part isn’t accurate. While it’s true thatPalworldhas the current record for the highest concurrent players for games that arecurrentlynot free, it doesn’t have the all-time record. That still belongs toPlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, now very confusingly titledPUBG: Battlegrounds. Back in its heyday, the game by PUBG Corporation managed to hit overthree million concurrent players, which is three times whatPalworldhas now. It’s hard to even begin to grasp just how big that game used to be, even though it still pulls huge numbers today. The reason why we’re ignoringPUBG’sgargantuan numbers is that the game has since gone free-to-play.
Still,Palworld’srun has just started, and the game is also likely amassing huge numbers of players on Xbox consoles and the Xbox Game Pass. Only time will tell how many more records Palworld will beat and if it can beat this one in particular.
You can now helpPalworldbeat this absurd record on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
