The main thing for the weekend (January 20-21)

Sales of Palworld exceeded 4 million copies, Valve may have earned almost $1 billion on Counter-Strike 2 cases in 2023, paid subscriptions may appear in the Epic Games Store — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

Palworld

• The action game about "Pokemon" Palworld has become a new hit. Over the weekend, PocketPair studio announced increasingly large sales of the game several times. She last reported that Palworld had sold over 4 million copies in three days since its early access release. In addition, Palworld ranked fifth in the top games with the highest online content in the history of Steam. According to SteamDB, 1,291,967 people were in it at the same time at its peak. At one time, only PUBG had more online: BATTLEGROUNDS (3,257,248 people), Counter-Strike 2 (1,818,773 people), Lost Ark (1,325,305 people) and Dota 2 (1,295,114 people).
• The authors of This War of Mine reported that sales of their game reached 9 million copies. It took the project nine years to do this: it was released in November 2014. The developers added that they sold over 500 thousand copies in 2023.
• According to the estimates of the CS2 Case Tracker analytical service, last year Counter-Strike 2 players opened 400.3 million cases. In the process, they used 359.6 million barbed wire and spent a whopping $980 million. It can be assumed that compared to 2022, Valve's revenue from cases has increased. According to CS2 Case Tracker, the average price of cases increased by 178% in 2023. However, the number of cases opened a year earlier is not given, so it is difficult to say anything for sure.
• Dataminers found lines in the Epic Games Store client hinting at the imminent appearance of paid subscriptions in the store. In particular, EA Play. As usual, they can be issued for a month or a year and extended if desired. Epic Games itself did not announce a possible innovation and did not comment on the discovery of the dataminers.