Pocketpair’s open-world creature collecting and survival game Palworld, unofficially dubbed by the internet as ‘Pokémon with guns,’ released in early access on Steam and Xbox Series X|S today (January 19), and it’s already proven to be exceptionally popular.

In a post on Twitter / X, Pocketpair revealed that in just eight hours, its open-world survival game managed to sell over one million copies. According to SteamDB, at the time of writing, over 363,000 people are currently in-game, and that’s not counting any of the Xbox players. 

While this popularity is quite a feat, it’s not come without consequences. Pocketpair also posted earlier today that the team is working to resolve server issues “ASAP” after the enormous number of concurrent players led to instability.

“Currently, our server provider is reporting that due to the large amount of concurrent players, the servers have become unstable and you may be experiencing issues connecting to servers,” Pocketpair wrote. “We are working to resolve this ASAP! In the meantime, some users have reported success in attempting to connect two to three times or waiting after launching the game.”

Despite what might initially look like a bright and cheery exterior, Palworld is full of dark and generally bizarre features that set it far apart from Pokémon and really any other creature-collecting game. Not only can you equip your captured creatures (Pals) with guns, and shoot wild Pals with said guns, but you can also eat them and force them to work. It remains to be seen if all this will have a long-term impact on how Palworld is received, but so far, it has a ‘very positive’ review rating on Steam.

Looking for more games to play? Be sure to check out our roundups of the best open-world games on PC, as well as the best Xbox Series X games to dive into right now.