Palworld is the second-biggest Steam game by concurrent players in the platform's history, an out-of-nowhere smash hit that's risen above the likes of Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, and Hogwarts Legacy to settle between Counter-Strike 2 and PUBG. It's an unlikely trifecta, but one that's united by one unlikely morsel: cooked chicken.
When Palworld overtook Dota 2's record, I realized that two of the top three games on Steam had chicken in common. In Palworld, it's mere moments before you're killing (and catching) oversized poultry, and not long before you're cooking Chikipi meet to stave off the demands of the hunger meter. In PUBG, the phrase "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner" was a bizarre stylistic choice offered as a prize to whichever team or player triumphed in the battle royale, and is now seen as iconic.
"Ahh," I thought, upon this realization. "Isn't it a shame that Counter-Strike doesn't share in this bizarre connection?" Fool that I was, I then saw with perfect clarity that Counter-Strike does have cooked chicken. Certain maps feature free-range poultry that can be enticed to follow the player, or shot into a cloud of feathers. However, if you hit a chicken with a Molotov cocktail, its roasted corpse will linger once the flames have been extinguished, completing the chicken trifecta of the three most popular games on Steam.
Coincidence? Probably. I'd grant you that chicken meat does not necessarily constitute a major aspect of any of these three games. However, it also seems unlikely that anything will dethrone Counter-Strike any time soon, and I think that means that the bizarre culinary thread that ties Palworld, CS2, and PUBG together is unlikely to be cut for the foreseeable future. Just don't go making a hastily-crafted KFC simulator and expecting it to sell millions of copies.
Check out our Palworld review to get caught up on Steam's new hotness.
