It takes an incredible amount of hype or a game of amazing quality to take on the greats on the Steam concurrent chart, and despite many trying, few have claimed the top spot over Valve’s behemoth FPS Counter-Strike<\/em>. Well, we can now add a new title to that esteemed list\u2014Palworld<\/em>.<\/p>
Pocketpair’s Pal-slaying survival game continues to shatter records just over a day on from its release, briefly knocking Counter-Strike 2<\/em> down and taking the number one spot on Steam’s concurrent list according to SteamDB<\/a> on Jan. 20. Palworld<\/em> peaked at 855,706 players in its first full day, a remarkable feat for the Early Access title. CS2<\/em> would reclaim its spot after a couple of hours but with more players entering the world by the hour, the survival game is here to stay.<\/p>
Counter-Strike’s<\/em> top spot on the Steam concurrent player list has been nigh impenetrable for years<\/a>. PUBG’s<\/em> slow decline and Dota 2’s<\/em> plateau outside of TI season has meant CS:GO<\/em> and CS2<\/em> have gone untouched at the top, for four years. Only Lost Ark<\/em> snuck home to claim the peak concurrent listing<\/a> back in February 2022.<\/p>
CS2’s<\/em> 23-month streak at the top is at an end for the moment though as Palworld<\/em> fever sweeps the world. Within just eight hours, the game sold over a million copies<\/a> and climbed straight onto the servers. CS2’s<\/em> lead looked shaky early as Palworld<\/em> rose through the concurrent list <\/a>but only crossed the historic mark once the majority of North America woke on Saturday morning.<\/p>
Despite a little backlash from some passionate Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> fans who claim Pocketpair has ripped off the franchise<\/a> and a few technical hiccups along the way, Palworld<\/em> launched fairly smoothly across all platforms<\/a>. Reception has been great and word-of-mouth will assuredly push Palworld’s<\/em> playerbase even higher as the weekend continues. <\/p>
We definitely aren’t expecting anything like PUBG’s<\/em> ridiculous 3.2 million concurrent record to be broken here, but with the game building such a healthy player base this early into its lifespan, Palworld<\/em> won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Pocketpair has already revealed plans for a PvP arena and more raids<\/a>, and we can also expect more fixes for the few annoying bugs that are affecting players in the coming week.<\/p>
Update Jan. 21 at 12:32am CT:<\/strong> On the stroke of midnight, Palworld<\/em> cracked the almighty one million concurrent<\/a> mark, becoming the sixth game to hit seven-digit concurrents on Steam behind Counter-Strike 2<\/em>, PUBG<\/em>, Dota 2<\/em>, Lost Ark<\/em>, and Cyberpunk 2077<\/em>. Amazingly it crossed the mark very late for North American players, meaning its final launch weekend player count is expected to rise further on Sunday.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
