At the risk of sounding cliche, Palworld is back baby! The Feybreak update has caused a surge in player counts and shot the game back up the Steam charts.
It’s hard to believe Palworld first launched into early access almost 12 months ago in January 2024. The survival game took the world by storm thanks to the ‘Pokemon with guns’ elevator pitch that prospective players labeled it with ahead of its release.
Those comparisons to Pokemon were a blessing and a curse as detractors of Palworld called it a rip-off of the popular franchise. It’s been a whirlwind for developer Pocketpair who have been accused of using generative AI in the development process and even tangled with the famously litigious Nintendo in a lawsuit.
Following its stellar launch and the various controversies surrounding the game, interest from all but a few hardcore Pal Tamers had fizzled out. That was until the launch of Palworld’s Feybreak update which has proven to be a massive success and drawn in the largest amount of active players since the game’s early access release.
Palworld player count flying again thanks to Feybreak update
For some context, back when Palworld first graced our screens on PC and Game Pass, it managed to draw in a jaw-dropping 2,101,867 concurrent players on Steam. At the time, this made it the second-most concurrently played game on the platform ever. At least until Black Myth: Wukong came along and knocked it down to number three.
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After the initial hype wore down, Palworld’s player count has hovered around somewhere between 20,000 and 35,000 depending on the day. That is if you don’t count an uptick to 143,369 players back in June 2024, when the Sakurajima update released.
Now that Palworld’s Feybreak update is live, however, the game has eclipsed that spike by drawing in 212,817 concurrent players in its latest 24-hour peak. It has also managed to crack Steam’s top 10 charts beating out Call of Duty and Baldur’s Gate 3.
This surge in popularity actually came a short while after the Feybreak update’s release on December 23, 2024. It looks like now that everyone’s gotten through the obligatory holiday madness, they’ve locked in a return to the Palpagos Islands.
If you haven’t jumped back into Palword since the launch of the Feybreak update, you can expect to find a brand-new island to explore, powerful Predator Pals, and a bounty system for hunting down criminals.
