For a long, long time it has seemed as though PUBG: Battlegrounds and Counter-Strike's all-time player peak records on Steam would be untouchable. With hit titles such as Lost Ark, Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, New World, Hogwarts Legacy, Baldur's Gate III, and so on all failing to get within 500,000 players of Valve's shooter and 1.7 million players near to the mega battle royale, the records seemed very safe. That isn't the case any longer.
Because after a huge few days since it debuted as an Early Access title on January 19, Palworld has now hit second on the Steam all-time peak charts, unseating Counter-Strike when it hit a player count of 1,864,421 late yesterday (which was around 40,000 more players than CS).
It does need to find another 1.4 million players to catch up with PUBG, but considering there is over 1.2 million active players as of the time of writing and the fact that the game has reached seven million sold copies since its arrival, there could be a chance that Palworld manages to achieve what seemed to be the impossible.