Feybreak’ draws 200,000 concurrent players, now in Steam Top 10

Palworld’s back? Palworld is back. The viral phenomenon still holds the honor of being the third most concurrently played game in Steam history with 2.1 million players at launch. But since then, even after an inevitable decline, it has maintained a solid player base for what is technically not a “live” game.

This weekend, its player count is up nearly 800% from its lows in recent months, and that’s actually the most players it’s had since its March 2024 release period.

The reason is a new update presented by Palworld, Feybreak, presented by Pocketpair at The Game Awards, the highest profile gaming showcase around these days. It started just before Christmas, but here the first weekend after the holidays, there it’s 205,000 concurrent players and climbingputting it on #8 on Steam for the first time in ages.

Feybreak is actually the biggest update we’ve seen from the game, with a new island six times the size of the last island added, plus new friends, buildings, gear, abilities, boss fights and so on. There are 23 new buddies in total if you want to add to your collection. There are Predator Pals roaming the landscape, a randomized Pal mode for new spawns, and a hardcore mode with permadeath for the first time.

Palworld was recently hit with a seemingly outlandish lawsuit from Nintendo claiming patent infringement, specifically for capturing monsters in the wild with thrown balls. Therefore, Palworld has made changes to apparently remove themselves from these patents, replacing the Pal Spheres with “modules” for modified capture which apparently is something Nintendo does not own. We’ll see if that clears things up.

Palworld has emphasized that it is not a live service, but some consider live games to be “any game that continues to make major updates”. Here, however, for Palworld which is mainly contained in major expansions, where this is the second and biggest one that the game has acquired since its release.

These new numbers (plus console) should indicate that yes, there is still a very large audience for Palworld, even if of course it was never going to reach those completely unexpected launch highs again. This is an expansion that has placed it above Apex Legends and Team Fortress 2, and just behind even the outright Marvel Rivals, at the moment.

If Palworld can continue to expand with fresh, meaningful content every now and then, adding new areas and characters, it looks like it could be a bit like a gacha-less Genshin Impact in many ways, perhaps having something in common with that structure rather than only Nintendo’s periodic installments of Pokemon. And this can indicate a very long life.

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