Palworld continues to discover numbers I was heretofore unaware of. Did you know there could be 8 million of something? I sure didn't, but then the game went and sold just that many copies in the course of around six days.
But that's old news, frankly, because on top of its dizzying number of sales, Palworld has just become the second game in history to reach over 2 million concurrent players on Steam, attaining an all-time peak of 2,018,905 players simultaneously seeking the best Pals (according to SteamDB). That puts it ahead of Counter-Strike 2, Lost Ark, Dota, Cyberpunk 2077, and, well, actually, it puts it ahead of literally everything else on Steam that isn't PUBG: Battlegrounds.
Palworld's all-time player peak is about 200,000 ahead of Counter-Strike 2's, but it's got a long way to go before it could ever nab the top spot. PUBG reached the absurd high of 3,257,248 players back when it made waves and turned two-thirds of videogames into battle royales back in January 2018. Maybe Palworld will have a similar effect. Fortnite could do with a Pokémon mode.
Personally, I don't think it will manage it, but I've been wrong before. Besides, a Poké-like reaching the heights Palworld has already reached is something for the history books already. I have to imagine the team at Pocketpair are as baffled and overwhelmed by their sudden superstardom as it's possible for human beings to be.
Pocketpair isn't just in the news for all the big numbers it's uncovering, mind you. It's just put out the Palworld roadmap, plotting an ambitious (but date-free) vision for the game's future. Plus, we're all warily eyeing Nintendo to see if the console titan takes issue with Palworld's conspicuous similarity to the Pokémon series. Kind of like a Mexican standoff with lawyers.
Nintendo seems surprisingly loath to bust out its legal team, though, but that doesn't mean other entities aren't scrambling to keep out of the crossfire. Nexus Mods recently told users it wouldn't be hosting Palworld Pokémon mods given Nintendo's record of "mercilessly submitting legal challenges." Probably wise.
