"Palworld's" rapid ascent continues, and with over 6 million copies sold in just four days, the developers have another reason to celebrate.

This creature-based survival game has given every other game in Steam's history a run for its money, peaking at 1,864,421 concurrent players. This not only made it the most popular game on Steam today, but it also took the number of concurrent players at its peak from Counter-Strike 2 by the narrowest of margins, securing its place as the second most popular game of all time.

Palworld launched just last week and may continue to climb, but it has fierce competition: PUBG currently holds the top spot with a peak concurrent score of 3,257,248. But this record may be broken; Palworld's momentum certainly shows no sign of abating.

This is a bit of a surprise. Indeed, it was firmly on our radar thanks to the quirkiness of its concept. It's a survival game that puts Pokémon knockoffs to work in mines and arms them with modern weapons. But no one could have predicted that this game would become the big game of the moment.

While Lincoln was a bit ambivalent in Palworld's Early Access impressions, player reception was generally positive, earning a Very Positive rating on Steam based on nearly 60,000 user reviews.

However, the game's appearance has been controversial. For example, Xbox and Game Pass players will be playing a version of the game that is not up-to-date, thanks to Microsoft's certification process. Takuro Mizobe, president of Pocket Pair, the developer of Pal World, has accused the company of "slander."

Naturally, big games always generate some drama, but it doesn't seem to have affected their popularity. At least not in a negative way.