Developer Pocket Pair continues to hit new milestones with its "Pokémon with guns" open-world survival game, Palworld. Earlier today, the game"s PC version on Steam reached a new concurrent player high of 1,864,421 gamers at once, according to SteamDB.info.
That means that Palworld, in less than a week, reached the second-highest concurrent player number in Steam"s history, beating out Valve"s free-to-play game Counter-Strike 2. Only another free-to-play game, PUBG: Battlegrounds, has a higher all-time concurrent player number of 3,257,248 on Steam.
#Palworld has sold over 6 million copies in only 4 days!
— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) January 23, 2024
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
The game also continues to hit new sales milestones as well. Palworld"s official X (formerly Twitter) account announced earlier today that it has sold 6 million copies in its first four days of early access on PC and Xbox platforms.
Pocket Pair has also been trying to fix a number of server issues and bugs for Palworld. Earlier today, the Palworld X account revealed that fixes for the Xbox and Microsoft Store PC versions of the game are being rolled out.
The developer has also been dealing with accusations of Palworld ripping off Pokémon"s art assets. GamesRadar reports that a number of game developers, such as former Blizzard team member Eric Covington on his X account, believe that Palworld"s models for its various "Pals" simply look too similar to models used in Pokémon games to be pure coincidence.
To “accidentally” create a complex model mesh with so near-exact proportions is practically impossible. To repeat that improbability throughout your roster… doesn’t pass the sniff test. #Palworld #Pokemon
— Eric Covington (@covingtown) January 22, 2024
(Media credit: @byofrog) pic.twitter.com/IiSEe7MCDq
Pocket Pair"s CEO Takuro Mizobe, in an interview with Automaton conducted before Palworld was released, claims that the game has passed through legal reviews. He added:
We make our games very seriously, and we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies.
While that could be true, a video on YouTube promoting a Pokémon mod on Palworld was quickly removed due to a copyright claim from The Pokémon Company and Nintendo, according to GamesRadar.