Ballworld's astonishing success was amplified over the weekend, with 'Pokemon with Guns' surviving and making Steam's most-played games list, selling millions more copies.
Ballworld launched on Steam and Xbox and Windows PC on January 19th with Game Pass in early access format, day and date. Ballworld set the fifth-highest concurrent player count on Steam with 1,291,967 online concurrently on Valve's platform, overtaking CD Project's Cyberpunk 2077. Ballworld is currently the most played game on Steam, ahead of Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2 and PUBG. It is the sixth game on Steam to hit one million concurrents.
There are many Steam records with this hit on Steam. Ballworld, now on Steam (and its developer, PocketBear, is based in Tokyo), is the most-played Japanese-developed game, surpassing the previous record holder, Elton Ring. And Ballworld is the second most played game on Steam, behind PUBG's unsurpassable peak of 3,257,248, which was set before Battle Royale went free-to-play.
Meanwhile, Pocketbear said Ballworld sold more than five million copies in about three days, selling 86,000 copies per hour. For context, Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man sold 3.3 million copies in its first three days, Sony Santa Monica Studios' God of War sold 3.1 million in three days, and Naughty Dog in the Last of Us 2 4 million. . Ballworld sold out faster than the fastest-selling first-party PS4 exclusive in a three-day sales window. All of this even though it's available day one on Game Pass.
While Ballworld was a clear smash hit, it was not without controversy. Last week, IGN reported how some Pokemon fans are taking to social media to point out the striking similarities between Ballworld's Pals and Pokemon. Elsewhere, the Xbox version lags behind the Steam version in terms of key features and updates. Ballworld's massive launch has also seen its servers struggle.
Check out IGN's Ballworld Early Access review to find out what we thought.
Wesley is IGN's UK news editor. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
