While this is not a “Palworld is doomed post,” I believe it is important to recognise what will undoubtedly go down as one of the biggest surprise achievements of 2024, despite the fact that it is so early in the year.
Palworld achieved the second highest concurrent peak of all time on Steam, with 2.1 million players. It’s enormously amazing, beating out titles like Dota 2 and CS:GO. However, despite ongoing high totals in context, things are beginning to fall off swiftly.
That 2.1 million peak occurred about 15 days ago, and we are presently seeing numbers closer to 750,000, with peaks dropping by roughly two-thirds throughout that time. Again, that is enough to keep it at the #2 rank on Steam right now, trailing only CS2, and still outperforming another new “hit” game like Helldivers 2 at 120-150K.
I’m curious about Palworld’s long-term prospects, though. Was it just a “craze” that will result in dramatic player losses? Or is it something that will have legs and, although not a direct competitor to Pokemon, can take some significant chunks out of the seemingly indestructible franchise?
One issue I see with such a severe drop so rapidly is that this is not a one-and-done single player game. The main draw is that it is a live survival game that can be played on crowded multiplayer servers. Even if not, this is a game includes extremely long-term goals and grinds, such as attaining max level, constructing expansive bases, completing your Paldeck, and breeding and farming powerful Pals that can take aeons to completely develop. However, it appears that approximately 1.4 million gamers checked out what all the excitement was about and left within a few days.
Whatever happens now, Palworld will be deemed a huge success. It’s crucial to remember that this isn’t a free-to-play game; all of those players paid $25-30 for their copy. This is hundreds of millions of dollars going to tiny developer Pocketpair, who is apparently struggling to keep up with their unexpected scaling needs.
I’m particularly wondering whether this drop off will continue or whether it will stabilise with a longer-term, healthy player population. A few hundred thousand regular players would be ideal. Plunging below $100,000 in less than a month would be less so, indicating that it most likely does not have legs, despite its initial, undeniable success. I’ll keep an eye on it in either case.
