Palworld Hits Fifth-Highest Peak Concurrent Players in Steam History, Beats Cyberpunk and Elden Ring

Palworld, an open-world action-adventure title where players can combat and capture Pokemon-like creatures, has become a phenomenon, rising to the top of Steam charts days within launch. The game, which also incorporates elements of the survival genre, now has the fifth-highest peak concurrent players in the history of the Valve storefront, going past heavyweight titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy. Palword developers Pocketpair also confirmed Monday that the game has sold over five million copies within three days of launch.

Released on January 19, Palworld, popularly described as “Pokemon with guns,” is tearing up Steam charts to become one of the most played titles in the platform's history. According to SteamDB, which aggregates Steam player data, Palworld is now the fifth most played game on the service, with an all-time peak of 1,291,967 concurrent players. The action-adventure survival title is now only behind games like PUBG: Battlegrounds, Counter Strike 2, Lost Ark and DOTA 2.

Palworld's massive success also means that it has left behind top-selling games like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy in its wake. CD Projekt Red's RPG has all-time peak concurrent player count of 1,054,388, while FromSoftware's acclaimed action-RPG stands at 953,426. Hogwarts Legacy, which sold over 22 million copies in 2023, peaks out at 879,308 all-time concurrent players.

The numbers are even more staggering if we look at current concurrent player counts. Palworld tops the chart with 895,847 players at the time of writing, with CS 2, DOTA 2 and PUBG: Battlegrounds rounding out the second, third and fourth positions, respectively. Palworld also tops the list of titles with highest peak concurrent players in the last 24 hours.

In a post on X, Palword developers Pocketpair announced Monday that the game had sold a whopping five million copies in only three days. Palworld reached the four-million mark on Sunday, with Pocketpair claiming latest sales momentum figures of 86,000 units per hour. The gamemaker has also been flooded be support requests, receiving over 50,000 inquiries. Players have complained about server outages, bugs and other serious issues hampering the game. The developer said that it was working to bring fixes for the reported issues, but it might take some time. “The development team is aware of serious bugs that are occurring, such as being unable to enter servers, unable to play multiplayer, and losing saved data, and are currently working on fixing them,” the developer said on X. “We will share information about the fixes for these issues as soon as possible.”

Palworld released January 19 across PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X consoles. The game allows players to capture, utilise and combat cute Pokemon-like creatures — Pals — and survive in an open-world multiplayer setting. The game has been received well on Steam, with the overall verdict standing at “Very Positive” after 39,554 reviews. On Steam, Palworld is currently available in Early Access for Rs. 1,300, with an introductory discount of 10 percent live till January 25.