Palworld becomes only the sixth Steam game to reach one million concurrent players, beating Cyberpunk 2077 in the record books

21.01.2024 - 15:07 / gamesradar.com / Kaan Serin

Palworld continues its record-breaking early access ascent, passing juggernauts such as Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam's all-time charts.

The monster-taming, base-building survival hit rocketed to an estimated concurrent player peak of 1,200,000 according to Steam Database. That makes Palworld only the sixth game to ever surpass the one million threshold, putting it in league with absolute behemoths such as Cyberpunk 2077, Dota 2, MMO Lost Ark, Counter-Strike 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds. 

With its meteoric success still rising, Palworld now holds the record for the paid game with the highest concurrent player peak, exceeding even Cyberpunk 2077's impressive numbers. The only games with bigger concurrent player peaks are all free-to-play - though it should be noted that PUBG's number were still higher even before it made the free-to-play jump.

#Palworld has 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! #Pocketpair pic.twitter.com/tYHfHWLqM9January 21, 2024

Estimates on Steam fail to paint the full picture, though, since the game is also available on Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass, and the Epic Games Store. Developer Pockpair announced that the game had exceeded 1.3 million concurrent players across all platforms earlier today, although the servers are still buckling under the weight of so many people with connectivity issues affecting co-op.

Palworld's rise to the top, surprisingly, took no time at all when compared to the gradual word-of-mouth growth enjoyed by fellow craft-and-survive gems like Valheim. The game very quickly reached an impressive 200,000 peak in mere hours, only to quadruple that number within the next day. It also sold two million copies in just 24 hours, all while retaining positive user reviews on Steam.

For those who have been caught off guard, Palworld's eye-catching premise promised to be a monster-taming game where the off-brand Pokemon wield machineguns and where you can force all your Pals into factory work. It leans extra hard into that edgy personality, even allowing players to capture other humans and sell their parts on the black market, to both the delight and horror of many.

Seeing what all the hype is about? Check out how to capture Pals and master the Palworld types chart for the edge in combat.