Palworld developers claim to have sold 1 million copies within 8 hours

Image: Pocketpair

Ana Diaz
(she/her) is a culture writer at Polygon, covering internet culture, fandom, and video games. Her work has previously appeared at NPR, Wired, and The Verge.

Palworld, the game that looks like, “Pokémon, but with guns,” was released Friday and is already one of the biggest releases of the year.

According to its developer, Pocketpair, the game has sold over one million copies within “about” eight hours of its release. Pocketpair shared the impressive sales number via X, but did not add any further clarification as to what that sales number included. Palworld launched to both Steam and Xbox Games Pass, so it’s unclear if that number includes copies of the game that Xbox Game Pass subscribers download as part of the service.

Palworld has sold over 1 million copies in about 8 hours since release!
Thank you to everyone for playing!#Pocketpair #Palworld pic.twitter.com/HbllMotIJr

— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) January 19, 2024

Polygon reached out to a representative of Pocketpair and asked the team to clarify what the sales number included. We will update the article as we hear back.

Regardless if the sales number counts the Xbox Game Pass downloads or not, Palworld has had an absolutely massive release day. According to Steam Charts, the game has over 340,000 concurrent players on Steam on Friday afternoon, beating out other popular titles like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Baldur’s Gate 3.

Palworld has been drumming up buzz for a long time now. Basically it stuck out for the contrast between its cute creatures and brutal conditions — previous trailers have shown its adorable monsters fighting with military-grade machinery and creatures toiling away in factories. It basically looks like a militarized Pokémon game, but with additional survival elements as well.

 

Source: Polygon