Palworld
Palworld wasn’t just a hit when it was released, and shed its meme-appeal of “Pokémon with guns,” revealing a substantive, engaging game underneath. It was, and will likely remain for a long while, one of the most popular games on Steam ever, securing the second-highest concurrent playercount in the service’s history with 2.1 million players playing about a week and a half after release, as it started to spread like a colorful, hilarious virus.
I have written about its decreasing playercount in the past, and that has continued, but I wanted to check in on Palworld which some were initially saying could be a significant Pokémon competitor given its performance and a few of its upgrades over Nintendo/Game Freak’s fabled series, the best-selling video game franchise in history.
The end result is a game that is still performing well, but its virality has certainly subsided, and questions remain open about what the small team at Pocketpair is able to deliver from here. And the idea of being a “true” Pokémon competitor is (though likely always was) a bit of a reach.
From its 2.1 million concurrent highs, the game now peaks are around 140-180,000 concurrent players, with valleys more in the 50-60,000s. This is still very solid, even if it’s an 94% or so drop from its peak. That routinely still puts it inside the Top 10 on Steam, though it drops out during off times. While it was out earlier, it does seem to lack the ultra-high stickiness of something like Helldivers 2, which is still doing concurrent in the 300,000s since its release a month ago, losing players from its 450,000 peak but still holding high in the top 10.
Palworld
Palworld’s updates have been somewhat frequent, but almost entirely focused on fixing bugs and some quality of life issues rather than adding new content. Its last patch was around two weeks ago, and that involved fixing ever-present pathing bugs in bases where Pals would jumble up with each other doing deliveries or start hanging out on top of farms or logging mills instead of working.
There is a long term plan for Palworld, but without any dates or even windows attached. Pocketpair rolled out a long list of things they were going to add to the game like PvP, new Pals, new gear and endgame dungeons. Also on the roadmap was…an actual roadmap, but that’s not something we’ve seen either.
Would adding these things piecemeal increase its playercount? Would saving them up and dropping them all at once as a sort of expansion be the better option? It’s unclear what the plan is.
Palworld is an odd game because it both is and isn’t grindable for a lengthy endgame. You can infinitely catch or breed Pals to get high level monsters, a process which takes ages, but also due to server customization you can shave as much time and difficult off that as you want. It also doesn’t really even have a campaign, so you can’t really say you “beat it” like a traditional game. And Palworld both is and is not a live game, offering ongoing fixes but also the promise of new content to come, even if it’s not structured in terms of seasons and battle passes, and there has been no microtransactions announced either, a welcome relief in this day and age.
No, I don’t think Palworld, despite its initially massive success can explode into being a full-on Pokémon competitor, despite its many improvements over the game its emulating, but even with sharp player drops, it was doing so well that it can lose 94% of its players and still have a solid community. And the drops are starting to taper off, meaning it may get a strong baseline going forward, and those new updates could definitely cause a new surge. It’s taking a different path than the frequently updated Helldivers 2, but it’s solid. It didn’t hang on to its unprecedented blockbuster status for too long, but it’s still inarguably doing well.
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