Palworld is no secret to viral success, but recent comments from Pocketpair during Gamescom 2026 shed a little more light on what this viral success actually means, specifically as it pertains to platforms like Steam. Specifically, the publisher highlighted gaming culture’s fixation on the various statistics offered freely through Steam, which have so often been used to either blindly praise or undermine a given project.
I’m referring to concurrent user counts, as presented by platforms like SteamDB. For any game on Valve’s ubiquitous PC launcher, you can check its current concurrent user count, its 24-hour peak concurrent user count, and its all-time peak concurrent player count. For example, at the time of writing, the massively popular Counter-Strike 2 has an all-time peak concurrent player count of over 1.8-million, with nearly 1.2-million players active right now. Using this data, we can get a rough idea of how well Counter-Strike 2 is doing, and how far off it currently is from the peak of its popularity. There are plenty of useful applications for this sort of analysis, but Palworld publishing head John Buckley makes some important points about its limitations.
The Major Shortcomings of Steam’s Concurrent Player Count Data
A salient point raised by Buckley during a Gamescom 2026 interview (via GamesRadar) has to do with how Steam chooses to collect active user data. “Concurrent” just means “at the same time,” so “concurrent players” just translates to “players playing the game simultaneously.” This can be a useful metric for games that are exclusively or primarily multiplayer, like Warzone or Fortnite, but less so for single-player or more casual co-op games like Palworld.
Buckley thinks we ought to instead start looking at daily active users for games:
“I think we need to start sharing DAU [daily active users]. I wouldn’t be against making DAUs public – the amount of actual people who played a game in one day. Because I think a lot of people would be shocked how different these numbers are. You know, a game that has 1,000 CCU could have 20,000 DAU. The numbers are quite different.”
He makes a compelling argument. While the difference between concurrent players and daily active users might not be so important for some games, it could communicate a world of difference for others. Again, for a single-player game, concurrent users doesn’t mean that much. Sure, a massive AAA release is likely to have an equally massive concurrent player count, but this paints an unnecessarily limited picture of its success. Many players may only have an hour to play a game on a given day, for instance. These players won’t make as great an impact on concurrent player count, but they should still affect our perception of a game’s ongoing popularity.
Concurrent Players On Steam Says Nothing About Other Devices and Launchers
The other, more obvious problem with using Steam data as a measuring stick for a game’s overall success is the fact that it doesn’t consider other platforms. To be clear, if a game has, let’s say, 1,000 concurrent players on Steam, this quite literally only means that there are 1,000 players running the game off Steam; the figure is not at all reflective of players on Nintendo, Sony, or Xbox platforms, nor does it account for those playing through non-Steam PC launchers, like Epic Games Store, GOG, or the Xbox App.
Again, this matters more for some titles than others. For example, there are many games that have found success via Xbox Game Pass—you may even count Palworld among this number, as it was made available on the subscription platform at the start of its early access period. If we only measure success by concurrent Steam player data, the substantial number of players who discovered Palworld through Game Pass, whether that be via PC or console, are effectively discarded.
The other, more obvious problem with using Steam data as a measuring stick for a game’s overall success is the fact that it doesn’t consider other platforms.
For games that get disproportionate attention on Game Pass (e.g. Hi-Fi Rush, Starfield), these effects are even more pronounced. The same can be said for games that are primarily played on consoles. For instance, SteamDB currently charts NBA 2K26 as having an all-time peak concurrent player count of 52,863, but considering how popular the NBA 2K series is on console, this number is probably very far below the actual peak concurrent player count across all devices.
The Best Approach to Steam Data Is a Measured, Holistic One
-
Image via Valve -
Image via 2K -
Image via Bethesda
With all of this in mind, one might begin to question whether statistics like those provided by SteamDB actually have any meaningful value. I’ll admit that, in a case like that of NBA 2K, citing Steam concurrent player data as evidence of popularity or success is fairly useless. However, this data from Steam can still be a helpful resource for analysis, whether on the behalf of investors, publishers, or developers. For a game like Palworld, which has a sizable presence on PC, these figures can help indicate overall player engagement.
If we only measure success by concurrent Steam player data, the substantial number of players who discovered Palworld through Game Pass, whether that be via PC or console, are effectively discarded.
If a game has a large concurrent player count on Steam, it’s likely that it also has a healthy playerbase on whatever other platforms it’s available on. If there’s a sizable discrepancy between Steam concurrent player data and success on other platforms—for instance, if a game launches on Steam and PS5, but PS5 players constantly criticize the game online—it indicates that the problem probably isn’t the game itself, but rather optimization on other platforms, or demographic differences. This is just one example of how Steam concurrent player data, used in conjunction with other evidence, can be useful.
Too often, this Steam data is leveraged by gamers (and occasionally, publishers and developers) to prop up a game they like, or to dunk on a game that they dislike. In these cases, concurrent player counts on Steam are almost treated as a score, not dissimilar to those seen on platforms like OpenCritic. But whereas those sites aggregate data from numerous different sources, Steam only draws data from itself. This is essential to remember.
- Released
-
July 10, 2026
- ESRB
-
T For Teen Due To Violence
- Developer(s)
-
Pocket Pair, Inc.
- Publisher(s)
-
Pocket Pair, Inc.
