Developer Pocketpair just announced that its Pokemon-style survival crafting game Palworld has sold over 6 million copies since its release four days ago.
The game launched this week in early access and it was immediately flooded by eager Pal Tamers, so much that the servers started to buckle under pressure.
Yet, the launch certainly appears to be a success, as mentioned on the title's official X (previously Twitter) account.
Some may be thinking that the flattering sales number may include players on Game Pass, but that doesn't appear to be the case. The official Japanese X account of the game is a bit clearer, mentioning that the million is just sales on Steam. This means that the number of actual players is likely much higher.
Looking at the game on Steam, it's the current top seller with a massive 1.582 million peak concurrent users (via SteamDB).
At the moment of this writing, it's the most-played game on Steam and is ranked third for peak concurrent players in the whole history of the platform, behind PUBG and Counter-Strike 2, having beaten Cyberpunk 2077 and Lost Ark overnight.
Interestingly, the latest update from PocketPair mentions a 1.7 million concurrent user peak number, but the discrepancy can be possibly explained by the inclusion of players who keep their gameplay private, which aren't reported by SteamDB.
This is partly helped by the fact that Palworld is popular in Japan and Asia as much as it is in the West, which increases the potential for high concurrent figures when the American evening meets the Japanese afternoon.
Update 1/20/2024: The post has been amended to include the new milestone. Earlier, it mentioned that PalWorld had achieved 1 million copies sold and 350,000 concurrent users on Steam in 8 hours since its launch.
Update 1/21/2024: The post has been updated again. Earlier, it mentioned that PalWorld had achieved 2 million copies sold in 24 hours.
Update 1/21/2024: The post has been updated with the new concurrent users number on Steam. Before the update, it mentioned 855,000 from earlier today.
Update 1/21/2024: The post has been amended again with the new 4 million sales and 1.291 million concurrent users stats. Before, it mentioned 3 million and 1 million respectively.
Update 1/22/2024: The post has been updated again with the new 5 million sales and 1,582,482 concurrent users stats.
Update 1/23/2024: Another update includes new numbers, with 6 million sales and 1.7 million concurrent users.
User reviews are "very positive" with many players impressed by the deep survival mechanics and by the fact that it surpassed their expectations. That's not exactly surprising considering that the "Pokemon with guns" theme led many to underestimate Palworld as a meme game that existed just to spoof Game Freak's popular franchise.
As it turns out, Palworld is much more than just a Pokemon clone. Due to its crafting survival mechanics, which are popular on their own, it definitely stands on its own two (or four, depending on which Pal you're looking at) legs.
It'll certainly be interesting to see its trajectory, but for now, it appears to be a massive surprise success, which is always nice to see.
If you want to see more about Palworld, you can read our hands-on preview (written by a big Pokemon fan, mind you, so if you enjoy the storied franchise by Game Freak, you may relate to the point of view) and check out a video showing how to use your Pals effectively.
Incidentally, if you want to rent a server for PalWorld, you can do so on g-portal.
Note: TechRaptor participates in an Affiliate Partnership with g-portal.
