The new “Pokémon with Guns” internet sensation Palworld has set another new record, achieving the second highest concurrent player count in Steam’s history and surpassing FPS titan Counter-Strike 2.

Since its early access launch, Palworld has been setting record after record, selling over 6 million copies and surpassing more than 1.7 million concurrent players in only 4 days of release.

On Tuesday, the game set a new record again, hitting 1,864,421 concurrent players according to Steam data tracker SteamDB, overtaking Counter-Strike 2, which peaked at 1,818,773 concurrent players.

The only game that has ever surpassed Counter-Strike in concurrent player count on Steam was the battle royale hit PUBG: Battlegrounds, which holds the total peak record of 3,257,248 currently.

“Thank you for playing the game even though it is a weekday!” wrote developer Pocketpair on Twitter about the record.

“The team is working hard to ensure that you can enjoy the game even more comfortably.”

Palworld was released in early access on Steam and Xbox Game Pass on 19th January 2024 and quickly skyrocketed in players and internet conversations.

Despite its successes, the game drew internet discourse with accusations of plagiarism, utilization of generative AI, and asset theft, largely due to its creature designs bearing striking similarities to Pokémon.

Takuro Mizobe, Palworld Game Director and CEO of Pocketpair, subsequently posted a response on Twitter stating that the development team has been receiving death threats and abuse online over the plagiarism allegations.