Palworld – you know, the open-world survival game with the definitely-not-Pokémon you might have heard about once or twice lately – has, less than two weeks after its early access release, officially surpassed 19m players on Xbox Series X/S and PC, with Microsoft now touting it as the biggest third-party launch in Game Pass’ history.
We’ve known known developer Pocketpair has had a hit on its hands with Palworld for some time now, of course; its early access launch on 19th January got off a bumpy start as an initial influx of players brought the game’s servers to their knees, and just 24 hours later Pocketpair revealed 2m players were already galavanting around the Palapagos Islands.
Shortly after, Palworld became one of only six games ever to hit 1m concurrent players on Steam, and then updated sales figures brought the news it had shifted over 5m copies in just three days. Six days after launch, Steam sales hit 8m, and now, 12 days in, Pocketpair has announced Palworld has surpassed 19m players.