Palworld Exits Steam Early Access, Leads July 10 Weekend PC Deals
Palworld has officially left Steam Early Access. Pocketpair’s creature-collecting survival game moved to version 1.0 on July 10, 2026, arriving free for existing owners simultaneously on Steam, the Microsoft Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Game Pass, and the update immediately pushed the game’s Steam concurrent player count past the 470,000 mark for the first time since early 2024.
Released on July 10, 2026 as update 1.100.427, the full 1.0 launch takes Palworld out of Early Access, with Pocketpair describing the update as essentially a new game spanning roughly 27 pages of patch notes. The changelog itself became a minor story in its own right: Pocketpair’s document was sitting at 10,626 words and 66,550 characters, well beyond the 32,000-character limit of Steam’s own announcement posts. Publishing and communications lead John “Bucky” Buckley posted a screenshot of the problem on social media, captioning it “How to fit… patch notes… on Steam.”
Steam concurrents surge past 470,000 on launch day
Palworld entered Early Access in January 2024 with a Steam peak that has become gaming folklore. According to Forbes, Palworld hit a hard-to-believe 2.1 million concurrents on Steam, which remains the third-highest of all-time on the platform, behind only PUBG and Black Myth: Wukong. Nobody expected 1.0 to repeat that number two and a half years later, but the relaunch still moved the needle dramatically.
GamingBolt reported that shortly after the update went live, Palworld sat at 485,501 peak concurrent players on Steam, the fourth most-played title on the platform and its highest count since February 2024, one month after Early Access began. Momentum kept building into the weekend: a follow-up Forbes report noted the game had hit 714,000 concurrent players on Steam that weekend, with numbers boosted by Asian markets during the morning hours, a figure the outlet said meant Palworld’s second launch was now inside the top 15 of Steam launch concurrent peaks ever.
Pocketpair’s own numbers, cited by Forbes, put the jump in context: the game was doing 35,000 nightly players before jumping to 700,000 once 1.0 went live, a nearly twentyfold spike in a matter of hours.
72 new Pals, Awakening and Mutation headline the patch
The scale of the update explains the crowds. Insider Gaming’s breakdown of the official patch notes confirms the headline addition is the arrival of 72 new Pals, made up of 47 entirely new creatures and 25 variant Pals, bringing the game’s total roster to 287. Two new systems arrive alongside them: Awakening lets players push their favourite Pals beyond their previous limits, while Mutation introduces a rare breeding outcome that can produce exceptionally powerful offspring.
GamesRadar+ adds that the update also delivers an ‘Awakening’ mechanic that sounds vaguely like Pokemon’s Mega Evolutions, improvements to combat and balance, a new level cap of 85, new passive and active skills, overhauls to tower bosses, fresh base-building and multiplayer features, over 100 new Pal animations — though separate patch-note summaries from other outlets place the new cap at level 80, up from 65, so players should check the in-game tech tree for the confirmed figure on their platform.
Sunreach and the World Tree finally open
The two zones players have waited longest for are now live. Insider Gaming describes how players can now visit the mysterious World Tree and Sunreach, a brand-new region of floating islands, alongside a map expanded with Ancient Ruins, Watchtowers, additional Small Islands and new Settlements. The World Tree has loomed over Palpagos since launch; GamesRadar+ notes the key to the story of Palworld is the World Tree, towering over Palpagos, where players will face their greatest challenge yet.
Progression and story have been reworked to match. Existing saves carry over without a forced wipe, though the studio is nudging players toward a fresh start given how much of the early game has changed.
Price holds at $29.99 as launch discount runs to July 23
Pocketpair had previously flagged a possible price increase to accompany the full release, but reversed course. Siliconera reports the studio confirmed the cost will remain the same even when the 1.0 patch launches, meaning the game stays $29.99 on all platforms. The developer framed the decision as a “thank you” gesture after the game’s performance already exceeded expectations, according to a social media post cited by the outlet.
A launch-week discount is running in parallel to soften the entry price for new players. Steambase’s pricing tracker shows Palworld costs $20.99 on Steam, a 30% discount off its base price, available as a standalone purchase, with Steam’s own storefront confirming the sale is active. Australian and New Zealand buyers will see this same cut applied automatically through Steam’s regional AUD and NZD pricing rather than the US-dollar figure, so it’s worth checking the local storefront price before purchasing rather than assuming a direct currency conversion.
Read also: Palworld Exits Steam Early Access, Leads July 10 Weekend PC Deals
The Nintendo lawsuit backdrop hasn’t gone away
The 1.0 launch also lands while Pocketpair’s patent dispute with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company continues in the background, though with reduced stakes. Coverage of the case notes Nintendo narrowed its claims in late 2025 to cover only older versions of Palworld that predate Pocketpair’s own gameplay changes, and that a Tokyo court opinion is expected later this year, with no injunction sought against current or future versions of the game. Pocketpair, for its part, has continued shipping content and crossplay updates throughout the litigation rather than pausing development.
For a title that spent two and a half years in Early Access — a stage most Steam projects never graduate from — Palworld’s 1.0 numbers suggest Pocketpair’s audience never really left, even after the initial 2024 frenzy cooled off.
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