Palworld Dev Calls Out "Lazy" Discourse Around Hit Game Losing Concurrent Players

It's fair to say almost no one could have predicted the massive success of Palworld when the survival game launched last month. And now, the community manager for developer Pocketpair is hitting back against "lazy" narratives highlighting player drop-off for the title known as "Pokemon with guns."

Spotted by PC Gamer, Bucky on X (formerly known as Twitter) discussed the surprise popularity for Palworld as well as why it's okay to take a break from the game. "This emerging 'Palworld has lost X% of its player base' discourse is lazy, but it's probably also a good time to step in and reassure those of you capable of reading past a headline that it is fine to take breaks from games," the Pocketpair developer wrote. "You don't need to feel bad about that."

With Palworld quickly approaching the 1-month mark, it's interesting to look back at my own thoughts for launch.
In May of 2023, I was convinced that Palworld could break the 50,000 player mark. Anything above that seemed unobtainable though, and I certainly never expected it to… pic.twitter.com/1rZaV30QON
— Bucky | Palworld & Craftopia (@Bucky_cm) February 14, 2024

Bucky added that originally the goal was hitting 50,000 players for the survival game, but Palworld blew that away by passing 2 million concurrent players on Steam alone. It's only the second game in history to achieve that milestone. At the time of publication, SteamDB tracks Palworld as having over 480,000 concurrent players, sitting behind Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2.

In addition, Pocketpair announced at the end of last month that Palworld had topped 19 million players, with 12 million copies of the game sold on Steam. Microsoft noted it's the biggest third-party launch ever for Xbox Game Pass.

As for the future, there is a roadmap for Palworld that promises PvP and raid bosses. For more, check out GameSpot's Palworld guides hub.