Over 2 years since launch, Palworld hits 40 million players right before its 1.0 release, and now has over 8 million more players than Pokemon Red, Blue, and Green

Two and a half years since its Early Access launch, Palworld has passed a monumental 40 million players right before its 1.0 release – a number so impressive that it further widens the gap between it and the most popular Pokemon games in history, according to data.

Pocketpair has celebrated its latest milestone on social media, thanking players for their "incredible support" since launch. The hit survival game earned an enormous fanbase immediately after its release, quickly smashing Steam records – it became the second game on the platform to reach two million concurrent players (although Black Myth: Wukong later joined it in this league, and surpassed it).

Palworld hit 32 million players across all platforms in February 2025, meaning it's reached a further eight million in the last year or so – an impressive feat, especially while it's still in early access. Pocketpair communications lead and publishing boss John 'Bucky' Buckley previously told us this number was "unexplainable," saying that "a lot of people don't realize how much of an anomaly that is."

Now, as pointed out by fans on social media, there's also an interesting comparison to be made here. Widely circulated data of Pokemon's historical sales records (via Serebii's Joe Merrick) puts the series' top-selling game (or rather, games) as Pokemon Red, Blue, and Green – the very first releases. Specifically, it's believed they collectively sold around 31,380,000 copies.

Unlike some have suggested, this doesn't strictly mean that Palworld has outsold this trio of OG Gen 1 Pokemon games. Pocketpair specifically states its latest figure accounts for "players," which is an important distinction when the survival game is available to play via an Xbox Game Pass subscription.

Back in January 2024, the company demonstrated this when the game hit 19 million players – it explained that the figure was made up of 12 million copies on Steam, and seven million players on Xbox. Every copy sold is a player, but not every player is a copy sold.

Of course, it's still an enormous achievement to surpass Pokemon's golden trio in players, even if not sales, and with the upcoming 1.0 launch of Palworld on July 10, there's no doubt that Pocketpair is going to see another surge in sales. Maybe with that, the company really will be able to surpass them.

Arc Raiders and Marathon aren't "dead" just because their concurrent player count has dropped, Palworld lead says – but he's "not denying that some games do 'die.'"