Palworld developer calls player drop-off discourse ‘lazy’

Palworld has only been out for a month and has already proven to be a great success. The game has been setting records left and right eight million copies sold in less than six dayshas become the most played third-party game on Xbox Game Pass, and rising to the top of the Steam charts. Still, some people online have pointed out that the game’s number of active players has declined, and on Wednesday a developer responded by showing support for people who dropped the game.

A leading community manager at Palworld developer Pocketpair, who goes by “Bucky” online and in the game’s credits, said it’s “fine” to take breaks during games, and that players shouldn’t feel “bad” about it via X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday.

“Palworld, like many previous games, is not in a position to release massive amounts of new content every week,” Bucky wrote. “There will be new content and it will be great, but these things take some time. There are so many great games to play; you don’t have to feel guilty about jumping from game to game. If you’re 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.

Japanese indie studio Pocketpair released Palworld in Early Access on January 19th on Windows PC and Xbox Games Pass. The game became a hit sensation on its first day of release with more than 1 million copies sold. Interest continued to rise for about a week, but then players began to decline. According to Steam Charts, Palworld has seen an estimated 25% drop in the game’s average player count over the past 30 days. The dip generated media coverage and further discussion among fans, and that’s when Bucky jumped in.

Pocketpair’s community manager called the discourse about the dip in the player base “lazy” and expressed disbelief at the number of players who have shown interest in the game at this point. “In May 2023, I was convinced that Palworld could break the 50,000 player barrier. However, anything above that seemed out of reach, and I certainly never expected it to be in the millions,” Bucky said.

It is normal for the number of players to decrease after an initial period after release. The battlefields of PlayerUnknownthe game with the highest number of concurrent players ever on Steam, saw a 12.23% drop in its active player base about two months after reaching its peak. That hasn’t stopped it from being one of the most popular games on the platform more than six years after its initial release. It is also common for interest to wax and wane in general. For example, the number of active users playing a game such as Fortnite can fluctuate between millions of playersdepending on the interest in a particular update.

Ultimately, any dip in the player base doesn’t take away from the huge audience Palworld has already grown. At the time of publication, Steam Charts says the game still has over 300,000 active players. That number is nothing to scoff at and doesn’t include players on other platforms. If anything, the fact that it’s still so big illustrates its newfound popularity in general, as even banal topics like the number of active players drive online conversations.