Following its 1.0 launch, Palworld once again proved just how popular it is. Though still not as big as it was when it first came out as an early access title, it’s now slowly closing in on a million concurrent players on Steam, something it hasn’t seen for quite a while now.
Prior to its 1.0 patch, Palworld averaged around 50,000 people during peak hours, which isn’t a small figure whatsoever, especially for a two-year-old early access game. It did have a couple of spikes here and there that followed major updates, such as in July last year when it peaked at over 104,000 concurrent players.
But with 1.0, things changed dramatically. As soon as the update dropped, the game soared to 500,000 concurrents and only kept growing from there, hitting 961,000 today and becoming Steam’s second-most-played title behind only Valve’s own Counter-Strike 2. The last time Palworld was this massive was February 2024, two and a half years ago, proving that the fandom was still lurking around but waiting to get something substantial to try out.
With this trajectory, Palworld can expect to hit over a million concurrents by tomorrow, though I’m sure that tonight’s World Cup finals won’t help its case one bit. Still, once folks are done watching the biggest sporting event in the world, they’ll probably go back to playing the game and drive it to levels it deserves.
Palworld 1.0 drastically expanded the game by adding over 70 new Pals, raising the level cap, new regions, and a proper in-depth endgame system. These are just a few changes, as truly grasping the size of this patch is not an easy feat, and you can read the official changelog here.
