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Palworld has come a long, long way from its somewhat dubious pre-launch just two weeks ago when the developers felt it necessary to clarify that the game wasn't a scam. Since then, it's surpassed Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, and Elden Ring to become the biggest Steam launch in history, and is now inching toward PUBG's world record for highest concurrent player count.
On Wednesday, developer Pocket Pair released some new stats that prove the ethically questionable creature catcher survival game is somehow, some way, even bigger than we previously thought. In a tweet, Pocket Pair shared the startling statistic that Palworld has now been played by a total of an astounding 19 million players across Steam and Xbox.
🎉Total number of players exceeds 19 million🎉It's been less than two weeks since #Palworld was released, thank you!・Steam: 12 million~ copies ・Xbox: 7 million~ playersWe will continue to prioritize fixing bugs!Thank you for your continued support of #Pocketpair! pic.twitter.com/twgAeYVL07January 31, 2024
As you can see in the tweet above, the 19 million figure is divided into 12 million players on Steam and a further seven million on Xbox, where it's available on Game Pass. Adding some context to those figures, the official Xbox blog points out that Palworld is now the biggest third-party Game Pass launch ever, the most-played third-party launch on Xbox Cloud Gaming, and currently the most-played Xbox game period with three million daily players.
For now, it seems Palworld truly can't be stopped. There was a time when it seemed inevitable that The Pokemon Company would throw a wrench into the game's apparent plans for world domination with a copyright claim, but so far it's only suggested that it'll investigate the potential for a legal battle.
Meanwhile, Nintendo is taking action against a much more blatant Pokemon clone.
