Summary
- Palworld surpassed 212,000 concurrent Steam players in late December 2024, following the release of its Feybreak update.
- This is by far the most concurrent Steam players that the game has had since its initial launch craze died down.
- It's unclear whether Palworld experienced a comparable popularity spike on consoles as a result of the Feybreak update.
Palworld's Feybreak update is already looking like a big success, with its release prompting tens of thousands of fans to return to the game. Based on the Steam player data alone, Palworld is currently the most popular it has been since March 2024, when its initial momentum wore off.
Palworld received the Feybreak update on December 23. It immediately peaked at over 136,000 concurrent Steam players later that day. But since the patch was a Monday release, it was expected that its true impact wouldn't be observable until the following weekend.
Palworld Giving Away 6 Free Skins for the Holidays
Palworld players have six new Christmas-themed skins to customize their Pals with to help celebrate the holiday season.
Sure enough, the game's popularity on Valve's storefront has been steadily increasing ever since. According to publicly available data scraped by SteamDB, Palworld peaked at 212,817 concurrent Steam players around 9am ET on Sunday, December 29. This is by far the most simultaneous players that have been recorded on Valve's platform since early March 2024. The last time that the survival crafting game surpassed 100,000 concurrent Steam players was back in late June 2024, shortly following the debut of Palworld's Sakurajima update.
Palworld's Feybreak Update Peaks 50% Higher on Steam Than Sakurajima
While Sakurajima led to Palworld being played by approximately 143,000 Steam users at once, Feybreak improved that record by nearly 50%. It's presently unclear how this Steam success compares to the game's current momentum on consoles. The PlayStation version of Palworld is currently not in the top 10 PS Store games in the United States, while its Xbox counterpart is nowhere to be seen on the "Most Played" section of the Xbox Store. But that's not necessarily to say that Palworld isn't enjoying comparable momentum on consoles, especially since it's unclear exactly how Sony and Microsoft track game popularity on their systems.
Compared to its January 2024 launch craze, when it peaked at over two million concurrent Steam players, Palworld still lost the vast majority of its PC user base as of late December. Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe recently described Palworld's player count decline as natural, stating that many people who purchased the game experienced a lot of what it had to offer by the time they dropped it. The Japanese studio plans to continue providing players with new reasons to return to the game moving forward, with Feybreak being just the latest example of such efforts.
Pocketpair has yet to share a content roadmap detailing what fans can expect from Palworld in 2025. In the meantime, the developer just recently released a minor patch meant to fix some bugs introduced in the Feybreak update. Identified by version number 0.4.12, the update rolled out to the PS5 and PC on December 26 before making its way to Xbox consoles a day later.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 71 /100 Critics Rec: 58%
- Released
- January 19, 2024
- ESRB
- T For Teen Due To Violence
- Developer(s)
- Pocket Pair, Inc.
- Publisher(s)
- Pocket Pair, Inc.
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
- Xbox Series X|S, pc
WHERE TO PLAY
In this game, you can peacefully live alongside mysterious creatures known as Pals or risk your life to drive off a ruthless poaching syndicate. Pals can be used to fight and breed, or they can be made to work on farms or factories. You can even sell them or eat them.
Survival: In a harsh environment where food is scarce and vicious poachers roam, danger waits around every corner. To survive, you must tread carefully and make difficult choices...even if that means eating your own Pals when the time comes.
Mounts & Exploration: Pals can be mounted to traverse the land, sea and sky—allowing you to traverse all kinds of environment as you explore the world.
Collect all kinds of exciting Pals to fight, farm, build, and work for you in this completely new multiplayer, open world survival and crafting game!
- Cross Save
- yes
- Number of Players
- 1-4 (Co-Op); 32 Players Server Limit
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- yes
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
- Genre(s)
- Open-World, Shooter, Survival
- How Long To Beat
- 36 Hours
- X|S Optimized
- Yes
- File Size Xbox Series
- 6 GB (February 2024)
- OpenCritic Rating
- Fair
