“Palworld is now one of only seven games that have seen over 1 million concurrent players on Steam – the others include: PUBG (3.2 mil), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (1.8 mil), Counter-Strike 2 (1.4 mil), Lost Ark (1.3 mil), Dota 2 (1.2 mil), and Cyberpunk 2077 (1 mil).”
Don’t worry, the devs have already won if the sales numbers are any indication.
As far as winning the larger gaming community’s opinion, I think that will depend on how they handle updates and bug fixes for the game going forwards. As an example, the dedicated servers have a massive glitch that causes you to lose all your progress and it’s hard to tell what causes it. Personally, how they respond to that bug (or bugs of similar magnitude) is my litmus test for whether this game will stand the test of time or not.