Well, it's here. Palworld 1.0 is now officially out, with a short story's worth of patch notes for fans to pore over before they dive in. Naturally, plenty of people have been flocking to the monster-collecting survival game, either for the first time or as returning veterans, causing the biggest spike in concurrent players on Steam since the period around its massive early access launch.
According to SteamDB at time of writing, Palworld currently has 302,384 people playing at once on Steam. Although that pales from the two-million-plus we saw when the game first became available back in 2024, that's a sizable amount of concurrent players nonetheless, and this is during unsocial hours in the United States.
Once North America wakes up, we can expect plenty more to join the party. The closest peak to this post-launch was in December 2024, where over 212,000 people were playing at once. Palworld's kept a consistent audience while it's been in early access, always staying in the tens of thousands even when not much was going on update wise.
On top of this, Steam reviews are in an extremely healthy position as well. Right now, Palworld 1.0 is at 96% positive reviews looking at the hundreds of ratings posted today, as dedicated fans have decided to give credit where it's due.
"Thank you for creating the game so many of us always wished Pokemon would become," says one review left today, July 10, from a fan with 140 hours on record. "Rather than waiting for that vision to happen, you brought it to life through your own original IP, and the result feels both familiar and refreshingly unique."
There's a lot of anti-Nintendo sentiment after the company pulled Pocketpair into a legal battle over alleged patent infringement. "Much better than any Pokemon game I have ever played," a fan writes. "Better than even Pokemon," another echoes.
Whether by protest against the home of Mario and Zelda or genuine curiosity, plenty are enjoying Palworld. Now that Pocketpair's put out 1.0, the sky seems to be the limit. Just don't expect any underwater swimming.
