Palworld has already left Steam’s long-running hit Counter-Strike behind

The Pals conquer Steam and player numbers go through the roof. Top 3 perennial favorite Counter-Strike has to make way

Update from January 23, 2024 at 3:59 pm:

Shortly blinked and Palworld pushes past Counter-Strike. Just over 30 minutes ago, the new survival game reached over 1.86 million active players at the same time, relegating the shooter to second place with its record of 1.82 million players.

Original message from January 23, 2024 at 13:12:

You may have already noticed: There’s a new hype game on Steam that actually lives up to the player numbers according to this description. The Early Access launch of Palworld went more than satisfactorily for developer Pocketpair. In fact, things are going so well that even shooter veteran Counter-Strike can already see the Pals crystal clear in the rear-view mirror.

Palworld is breathing down Counter-Strike’s neck

The mix of farming, building, fighting and monster catching easily broke the barrier of one million simultaneously active players on Steam on the first weekend after Early Access release.

On Monday, Palworld (according to SteamDB) already scratched the 1.6 million players and thus comes pretty close to the record of Steam’s long-running hit Counter-Strike. Valve’s multiplayer shooter reached its own peak in May 2023 with more than 1.8 million  simultaneously active players. At that time still known as CS:GO.

You have no idea what Palworld is? Take a look at the first few minutes of the game:

Is PUBG coming?  The Steam throne has been occupied by the battle royale shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds for a good six years. In January 2018, the game reached over 3.2 million players

Via X, formerly Twitter, Pocketpair announced that Palworld had already sold six million copies and reached over 1.7 million concurrent active players.

Palworld has sold over 6 million copies in only 4 days!
Our all-time peak player count has also surpassed 1.7 million.

Thank you very much!!!

Some users are experiencing problems and bugs, which we are addressing with the highest priority.

Thanks for your support! pic.twitter.com/j1CGWW52Rr

– Palworld (@Palworld_EN) January 23, 2024

As things stand at the moment, Palworld will only be able to speak in superlatives for the next few days at least. Presumably the next milestone of six million copies sold will not be long in coming, driving player numbers on Steam even higher