Palworld Team Responds to Decreasing Player Count

It has been exactly four weeks since the "Pokemon with guns" Survival game, Palworld, erupted onto the scene. In these four weeks, this Early Access title has experienced a massive surge in interest, becoming Steam's second-most played game of all time, just behind the battle royale progenitor, PUBG: Battlegrounds.

But with this wild and unexpected success came criticism regarding Palworld's recent decline in player numbers. From its all-time peak of 2,101,867 concurrent players, Palworld now shows only around 275,000 players currently in-game. In response to this recent criticism, the game's Community Manager, Bucky spoke out about their expectations for Palworld before its release as well as what players should expect going forward.

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 reach into the millions.

It has taken years to get to this point, and Palworld only really begins from here. Everyone is working hard to fix the issues and prepare new content and Pals. Some of you may have had your fun over the last 3 weeks and found yourself putting the game down. That is fine.

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. You don't need to feel bad about that. Palworld, like many games before it, isn't in a position to pump out massive amounts of new content on a weekly basis. New content will come, and it's going to be awesome, but these things take a little bit of time.

There are so many amazing games out there to play; you don't need to feel guilty about hopping from game to game.

If you are still playing Palworld, we love you. If you're no longer playing Palworld, we still love you, and we hope you'll come back for round 2 when you're ready.

Play lots of games, try different genres, and frequently flick through indie libraries to find hidden gems.

As with the majority of Early Access titles, Palworld developer, Pocketpair, has revealed several plans to add content to the game in the future. These future updates include player-versus-player combat, new endgame raid bosses, and new Pals to add to your Paldeck! As this upcoming content is still in development, Palworld's Community Manager encourages players to try out other games and come back to Palworld once the newest features have been added to the game.