• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

‘Palworld’ Has Lost Two-Thirds Of Its Players In Two Weeks

Draugoth

Gold Member
While this is certainly not a “Palworld is doomed post,” it is just something I think should be noted about what will unequivocally go down as one of the biggest surprise successes of 2024, despite it being this early into the year.

Palworld managed to snag the #2 concurrent peak of all time on Steam at 2.1 million players. Enormously impressive, and putting it ahead of games like Dota 2 and CS:GO. However, things are starting to drop off rather quickly, despite continued high totals in context.

That 2.1 million peak was about 15 days ago, and now we are seeing things closer to 750,000 instead, with its peaks down around two-thirds over that period of time. Again, that is enough to keep it at the #2 spot on Steam right now, behind only CS2, and still doing multiples of another new “hit” game like Helldivers 2 at 120-150K.

960x0.jpg


No matter what happens now, Palworld will be considered a massive success. It’s important to keep in mind that this is not a free-to-play game, and all those players shelled out $25-30 for their copy. This is hundreds of millions of dollars heading to tiny developer Pocketpair, which is reportedly drowning a bit now trying to keep up with their newfound scaling needs.

via Forbes
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Mainly depends on how much of a drop it continues to have. Still a success no matter what just based on general revenue, but might not be a sustained hit.

IMG-0025.jpg


if you just read the headline in a vacuum with no context that would be a logical conclusion, but when you’re dealing with numbers at this scale it changes things. It’s the only paid game in the top 5 and has 6x more players than Helldivers 2 which just launched at a similar price and is a huge success on PC.
 

BlackTron

Gold Member
The fact that it still has this status on Steam despite losing 2/3rds of its players is just an example of what a ludicrous success it is.
 

Madjaba

Member
Main streamers and influencers got their check.

Now onto the next most entertaining thing which can afford said influencers !
 

ByWatterson

Member
I mean this always happens, but this was clearly a moment sort of game.

They could turn it into something much bigger over time, but losing players now isn't a big deal - after you sell many millions of copies.
 

SCB3

Member
Its players max levelling and doing pretty all there is to do, mixed with players like myself that have been playing other games such as Helldivers, Suicide Squad and Like a Dragon, then we have the likes of FF7 Rebirth soon

As soon as it gets content it'll pick right back up again, and its still doing well regardless
 

Ozriel

M$FT
Peak concurrent isn’t exactly an exact measure of how many players a game still has. When people are playing in shorter bursts weeks after launch, you tend to have less overlaps and hence lower concurrent numbers.

You could have 1/3 of the peak concurrent numbers and still have more unique players signing in daily.
 
Last edited:

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
I've said this already but I commend their success. They put a game out they got whatever this internet darling status is and let's face it, it's really not sustainable or solid or clearly finished. There's no degree of whatever Fanboy posturing or whatever this game created in order for you to see that it doesn't have the legs to stick around unless they had been prepared and working diligently to patch content in and to fix the game into a more proper state.

Depending on where this goes and how fast, this will be a learning lesson and I hope people just don't jump on anything right away. There's only a few games that I've ever invested in like this that I felt had something of long-term viability and I honestly don't feel like this is one of them. I hope they make the game better and use the money wisely but if they just all got out of the business and took those hundreds of millions of dollars and split it up could you blame them?
 

LakeOf9

Member
It has 700k players on average daily lol. Obviously the peak isn’t sustained (that’s why it’s called a peak) but it’s doing great
 

Outlier

Member
People checking out what the fuss is all about. I won't be entertaining the thought of playing it. I already know it's not for me.
 

tmlDan

Member
cause the games not good, they just had that pokemon novelty with very poor building mechanics with no interaction amongst them. It'll die eventually but they do have some ambitious plans for the future.

I got to lvl 50, caught all the pals, so im not just saying this lol
 
Last edited:
I think the churn aspect of this number is important, and I wonder if there is a way to figure it out using public data. If this is 700k people who bought the game day one and are still playing, that is very different than if it is 400k still playing from day one, but every week 300k people drop it permanently but 300k new people purchase it. One of those scenarios provides a constant stream of new players and income and implies sustained public interest, one is just the baseline continued interest of the previous players of the game (which doesn't make them more money).

Even if none of these 700k are new players it doesn't really matter though because they already sold a ridiculous amount of copies. This could be a dead game in a month but it doesn't take away their sales.
 

GHG

Gold Member
Its pretty easy to reach max level and accomplish most everything in game in those said 2 weeks

You still have to put a hell of a lot of hours in to get there though. I'm level 43 now and have almost 60 hours. I'll finish what's there now and then will return for another run when it hits 1.0, whenever that might be.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
The meteoric rise the game had was never going to be sustainable, but it's not like the game's dead. I do think a lack of content is going to continue to be a huge drain on it, though.
 

Ribi

Member
I just wanted to reply to your message for posterity xD

Remember it is still in early access...
Palworld has gained and lost a million players in the time frame of a week, that's over 50% of their big surge they had.

MS would be dumb to purchase it or the studio. It was a tiktok social media fad, you would be smarter buying someone like pubg Corp or one of those studios if all you want is Asian made game with lots of players.

Palworld will be dead within a month most likely
 
Top Bottom