Palworld has surpassed 25 million players in its first month, studio says

22.02.2024 - 17:31 / videogameschronicle.com / Shuntaro Furukawa / Chris Scullion / Takuro Mizobe

Palworld has been played by more than 25 million players since its launch, its studio Pocketpair says.

According to Pocketpair’s figures, the game has sold around 15 million copies on Steam, while the Xbox version has around 10 million players.

Sales figures haven’t been specified for Xbox – while the game is available to buy on the Xbox store, it’s also available on Xbox Game Pass, so it’s expected that a significant number of Xbox players will have accessed it through the subscription service.

Pocketpair also points out that Steam user reviews are rated ‘very positive’. At the time of writing, there are currently 261,269 user reviews of the game on Steam, of which 245,848 are positive (around 91%).

In a post on X celebrating the milestone, Pocketpair said it would “continue to prioritise fixing bugs and preventing further cheating”.

The new figures suggest the game’s growth has slowed somewhat, but not to a drastic degree. By February 1 it had sold 12 million copies on Steam and had 7 million players on Xbox, which means it’s gained another 6 million players – 3 million players on each platform – over the past three weeks.

The game’s community manager has attempted to temper expectations for regular updates by advising fans to try playing other games while they wait for new content.

In a lengthy post on X, the community manager, who goes by the username ‘Bucky’ said a drop in concurrent Steam players since launch is fine because Palworld isn’t the sort of game that is regularly giving players new content.

Instead, he advised that players should be comfortable with playing something instead of Palworld, and returning to it later when new content arrives.

The survival game’s success has ignited discourse aroundperceived similarities between its character designs and those of the Pokémon games, with many accusing it of plagiarism.

Both The Pokémon Company and Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa have said they’re looking into the situation and determining whether Palworld infringes on its IP rights.