Palworld surpasses 32m players a year after release, but Nintendo lawsuit remains unresolved

Palworld has now surpassed 32 million players a year after release, though lawsuits filed by Nintendo remain unresolved.

Developer Pocketpair shared the news on social media, with those player numbers across Steam, Xbox and PS5.

The news arrives as the game receives its latest update, fixing crashes on Xbox and Steam Deck, reworking the Random Pal mode, and making various balance adjustments and bug fixes.

It’s been a rocky year Pocketpair and its monster-catching game, which first caught the attention of players for its Pokémon-with-guns aesthetic.

Upon release, the game hit two million players in just 24 hours and its all-time concurrent player peak on Steam remains just over two million players. Two weeks later, the game had surpassed 19 million players across PC and Xbox Series X/S, with Microsoft touting it as the biggest third-party launch in Game Pass history.

The launch was soured, though, by comparisons with the Pokémon series, with fans calling the Pal designs “lazy” due to their similarities.

The game eventually arrived on Sony’s PS5 in September, to further expand the playerbase. And that will increase further once a mobile release arrives, developed by Krafton’s PUBG Studios.

However, Nintendo dropped a major bombshell in September when it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Pocketpair, following a statement back in January it would “investigate and take appropriate measures”.

🎉Over 32 million Pal Tamers!🎉

It’s been a year since Palworld was released, and thanks to you our fans, Palworld has surpassed over 32 million players across all platforms! (Steam, Xbox, PS5)

Thank you so much!
As always, your support means the world to us! pic.twitter.com/pSJXmLGoh8

— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) February 19, 2025

To see this content please enable targeting cookies.

Pocketpair vowed to fight the lawsuit on behalf of fans and indie developers. “Pocketpair is a small indie game company based in Tokyo,” it said. “Our goal as a company has always been to create fun games. We will continue to pursue this goal because we know that our games bring joy to millions of gamers around the world.”