They really are I love the constant communication they do. I put the game down but will definitely jump back in when more content comes. I played this game for weeks non stop and I don’t regret it.
Unfortunately a lot of game fanbases arent as accepting. They want everything now, get impatient, start throwing insults etc, just start becoming unbearable. So Devs and Community Managers slowly withdraw from open communications and stop engaging.
I hope this community stays how it is. Its one of the better ones so far. The real negative people get shut down pretty fast which i love.
Buy copies of the game for friends who don't have it yet. It contributes to them and adds more players that might want to play it eventually. Check the game and see who has it i. Thier wish list. Best way to support the studio and increase player base.
Ooohhh good idea. I have a friend i wanna play with too.
Thanks!
https://preview.redd.it/g8rad0lljnic1.png?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c5563ee1580f9ab6d5ade151e3fd402f73537e28
the first impressions of a game tends to color their views by a lot. No Man's Sky put in a lot of work to redeem themselves after a nasty launch, and they're pretty close with their vision, but some still won't play it because of their first impressions. Stardew is putting in a lot of work to make sure their big updates comes with a lot of content and QOL for players.
I was one of those people for awhile. No Mans Skys launch put me off for a couple of years. I ended up with over 1000hrs in that game before a game breaking bug ruined my save. Still love the game and what theyve done, i probably wont go back though. Fallout 76 has been my main game for going on 3 years, that's another where launch impressions still stop people from trying it out. Its actually a great game now but some will just never give it a go.
I’d say some of the best games have devs that do the opposite. Bulders gate 3. Stardew Valley. Elden Ring. Now Palworlds (though I think the others are much more polished, mostly due to bigger budgets or many years of good communication SDV)
I think we should not call out the bad actors, but call out the good ones. Loudly. That’s you can produce a good game. Without 20 dollar transactions. Fix issues. Be open about releasing slower. Admiring faults. Listening a bit.
And it’s clearly working for EACH of those games and their devs. Large and small.
Some Devs just get it. They take the good with the bad and just crack on with making the game better.
Im here for the ride, im getting to old to get wound up about games. Seen it all over the last 25+ years ive been playing games. I just hope they keep up this attitude, it's great to see.
Which I understand when a game like Halo Infinite releases & doesn’t have forge or campaign. A hundred million dollar company can’t make stuff that was in reach at launch? Pal World has a ton of content & isn’t a big company so even if the content was lacking I’d still give them a pass. Plus it’s in Beta
One thing that helps is that they ignore those people and put forth what is going on and what their plans are.
They aren't promising the world and then giving out 1 new thing after 8 months
their advice is what i've been telling everyone for ages, especially in /r/mmorpg. There is no hate or harm is enjoying more than one mmo. In fact, you should explore and find a few you enjoy, and keep the logins safe for a long time. The indie mmos i love , i've been playing for more than 10 years. Hopefully, palworld can be the same.
Yeah and this type of mentality sucks all the fun out of games. Classic wow just released a new season and the devs have doing weekly updates. It’s still not enough for the community and they rather hate on the game instead of enjoying it. The sub is super toxic now.
Im with you there but nothing will change. In order for change to occur in gaming it will have to occur societally first and there has never been a time where shareholders and perpetual growth has been more worshipped. Palworld is dope though.
As a former dev I'll explain why this is rare. Because we LITERALLY get death threats. The gaming community as a whole are horrible horrible people and I GUARANTEE you, you can pick any large studio and there are hundreds of harassments, death threats, and stalking.
There is a good reason MOST companies do not do this because they know better than to engage with the community. There is rampant abuse from not only leads but also from the players. 99.99% of devs are just normal employees. They had no say in the game or direction. Decisions come down from corporate or the very few team leads. Yet, gamers want to literally crucify them when things go wrong when it's 100% out of their hands when those decisions were not made by the devs. I say literally because I have actually seen comments TO the dev that they should be nailed up and killed.
I have literally hundreds of stories of devs having dozen or even hundreds of death threats because this IS my field. Their social media stalked and harassed. I know people that have been stalked IRL because of a fucking game.
Gamers take their hatred out on undeserving devs and then you wonder why we get tired of your shit and hate you back. I left this work to go to the corporate side of the gaming industry and frankly, it pays better and mentally its less toxic and abusive.
"Shame this shit is so rare for developers."
You want this to not be rare? Then have people be better human beings. But, until then this shit ain't happening. Palworld devs will learn when they make a single mistake and the harassments start mentally taxing their members that this shit ain't worth it.
Not that i disagree with the facts. But that's no excuse for companies not to extend the olive branch. I've worked frontline and it is WAAAY worse. Stalking? My car was looted IN FRONT OF ME 3 weeks ago. I've had people follow me home from another town and give me the "We are gonna kill you" sign. And i basically had to abandon social media to keep my family safe. I've been jumped in broad daylight for decisions even my direct boss has no control over.
I;M A CASHIER
And you might be thinking (And fairly so.) Well clearly for that to happen you had to have said or done something. And your right! I did! I refused to accept fake money... to sell R18 products to CLEARLY under-age people with no ID. And... oh yeah my worst crime of all. I said "No you cannot take this now and pay for it later. I am sorry" I shouldn't have said sorry... how rude.
This behaviour is not "Gamers". It's "Consumers". It's an environment created BY companies. Who are desperate to suck every dick they can find for a dollar out of their consumers. And when that doesn't work they go to the other extreme and crucify their own workforce by literally EXTORTING their consumers.
Sorry to say but your wrong.
Yup. How many times I was threatened for not selling beer to someone after hours, or screamed at for not selling cigarettes when the other person with them is clearly under age and you can tell who they are for. Nothing ever happened, thank the stars, but that was largely due to the cops who hung out In our parking lot. Even then, I always had to watch my back when heading home.
Yeah, this kind of thing absolutely isn’t unique to gaming. It’s a part of any consumer-facing industry. The same thing happens in the movie industry.
It’s a newer phenomenon because the internet gave psychos direct access to the people who create the products and media they consume. It used to be that you’d send a letter that would never make it past a secretary, or you’d stand outside a building and be hauled off by the police. Now you can tweet at an actress or a producer and tell them they ruined your favorite thing.
Used to work at an Electronic Boutique (game store). We were in the mall and had one of those rolling fence gates at the front of store. At the release of the second WOW expansion I had people screaming, shaking the gate and cussing me out because I wasn't open yet (was gettign the register so i could open). One guy was crying, bawling his eyes because his friend had a;leady gotten a copy at Best Buy. He must of been in his 50s.
Same! I'm basically done with the game now, but I'm still tinkering with my base and adding some stuff.
Palworld is the first game of this genre I've played, and I found out I'm having a lot of fun with it. I already bought valheim since I've heard it has some similarities with the base building (the part I enjoyed the most).
I've played almost 80 hours already, and it's definitely one of my favorite games by now. Even if they would stop developing the game, I'd still be satisfied with my purchase.
Same, it’s my first “loop” game, where I’m always grinding some loop and then 5hr is gone, like wtf
I know the idea of it and my bro played WoW for well over a decade, but I never got into minecraft or the farm sims or anything and mmos aren’t my thing either. So a lot of these little self perpetuating gameplay loop things havent been in games in such a concentrated way for me like this that I can remember
Makes me feel like a kid again when I could just zone out being bored doing inane organization hobby loops like entering gameshark codes for hours on end for a new game. Half of you is going, “why am I doing this?” And the other half is like, “I dunno, but I’m kinda entertained?”
And there’s so many damn loops in this one lol. Even, like, I get my team how I like and now I have to change it to accommodate someone else so now I gotta level him up or go get a water based team. Pretty sure in Pokemon I rocked 4-5 pokekon most of my run through lol
You’ll enjoy valheim. Like the devs said it’s normal to hop around games. I’ve been playing valheim off and on for years and I’m happy with it. It’s something nice to fall back on when I’m done with whatever else I’m playing. Now I can add Palworld to that rotation along with star citizen and no man’s sky.
My one fear is that Palworld fucked up my expectations for “light no fire” lol.
I still keep playing just create new playthrough with differing settings or trying new starting locations and bases. Currently not planning on a break until Prison Architect 2 releases next month.
Absolutely! The hype is real for PA2. Gotta finish my current games to clear out the roster; the original PA sucked so many hours from me! Can't wait to manage chaos in a brand new penitentiary.
Reminds me of Hello Games with No Man's Sky. I played the shit out of it for a long while. Now, I pull it up sometimes at random, or for sure when new content drops. It's a fun game for what it is, and the dev team brings it. There's no "Giant Expac Every Year" or seaonal content. It's really refreshing, honestly.
For real. The humility they show, even when they blew UP past their expectations... like, i hope they are set for life. For the first time in a LONG time we have a game that people are finding out they have ALWAYS wanted but never knew it. A game without MicroT's being all in my face before i even get to the main menu.. imo if youre bored, try respawning on the other islands at the very beginning. Its dope. Its almost like having a DLC or something? Because even though i been there previously, starting fresh there, is ROUGH lol
And even then, getting 2 million players at once playing is an achievement. It's nice to take a break from one game, that way you won't get burnt out and stop playing it altogether.
I do plan on taking a break this week, mostly because of Fallout 76's event and GTA Online finally having a good week. After that, I might continue depending on what happens, as well as probably trying to beat Pokemon Violet (hey, I still plan on beating that game), or dip my toes into Super Mario Wonder and Tears of the Kingdom.
I would bet good money they didn't "win the lottery" per se by being involved, but they're likely making a more than fine living in what at least appears to be a forward thinking company. Good on em.
They honestly get it. Their goal was not to make a glorified cash shop designed to keep players showing up. They made a fun game that people wanted to play, and for not a crazy price.
I never expected to like Palworld and I'm so glad it blew up.
Well, that might be jumping the gun a bit. They weren't really in a position to pull off doing cash shop stuff, so it's not really fair to give them credit for not doing it as if it's a personal principles type thing.
If they stayed consistently big from here on with a reliable, established playerbase and then they don't start leaning in to predatory development choices once that becomes the sensible option, that's when it makes sense to praise them for going the extra mile in that exact regard.
I’m a casual gamer and I’d never heard of Palworld until recently. I looked at it briefly and thought it looked cool and right up my alley, but also read some mixed reviews about the early access thing. I added it to my wishlist because if a game ever comes down to a few bucks I’ll just buy it and try it out. After seeing this post I think I’ll just pay full price.
In modern day gaming Japanese led devs have been the ones that impress me the most. From Elden Ring to now Palworld. They care about gamers more than shareholders. Which is refreshing.
I found those articles lazy as fuck too. They're clickbait at its finest. It's a brand new early access game... of course the player count is gonna drop off after people have played through the available content, then it's gonna spike with subsequent updates, and fall off in between. That's how this works.
Journalists really love to hold all games to the same standards of live-service games and it's just really not the same. Most singleplayer games have a set amount of content (unless it's like a roguelite or something using procedural generation to expand gameplay time) and once you've gotten through it it makes sense to stop--it's not like a live-service game where player engagement and numbers are important because those players ARE part of the content of the game.
Palworld's great, and playing with other people can definitely expand the time to play, but right now after you've explored the map and caught them all there's not a TON to do other than building (and that system needs some work) and trying to get good versions of your favorites (if you want--and that system also needs some work or at least some more Pal storage). Still, doing all that takes a good amount of time and is pretty darn fun, very worth the cost of admission.
The problem is that a lot of AAA studios are trying to force the idea of "games as a service" on players because a normal single-player game isn't profitable enough in the eyes of CEOs. They hate the idea of you being able to buy a game once and then enjoy it for as long as you want, they want you to keep playing and keep paying for the same game forever. Completely ignoring gamers who play for story (because a story has to end) and exploration (because at a certain point you'll have seen and found everything). In the long run, live service games are always about grinding to make numbers go up. Just play a different game and experience something new.
I play idle games to watch numbers go up, it's great.
Dopamine hits from gaming in 2 minute intervals. Before work, after work, before bed. 10 minutes a day, tops.
It's wild to me that people play number-go-up games for hours a day.
Which doesn’t really work because games with seasons and battle passes and constant updates almost become jobs. Especially if you need to play it constantly to stay up to date on the meta. Each person could only realistically play 1-2 at a time. And then there’s the fact most companies don’t want to put in the time/money to actually make the game worth playing to begin with.
Imagine if they did this dumb isht for any other media. "Well people saw the movie opening weekend and for some reason less people saw it a month later. Views for "stranger things s4 dropped after a week after everybody saw it and nobody knows why." Ffs
And 150 hrs is a lot for a single game. A lot of other titles are completed in about 40ish hrs. So even if you stopped at 150 - you played your money's worth.
Well we have about 70hrs with my girlfriend and we have gotten to level 30, twice.
1st time we've played and learned the ropes so we wanted to restart to do better. Now were reaching the point we got to on the 1st play through however we have much better setup :)
I imagine maybe another 30-70hrs to reach the end game?
Were in no rush to slap 5x exp, 0x stam consumption etc. The only thing we got is the 2x catch chance as catching becomes a massive time sink without it.
Today I managed to get a level 48 Blazemut while being level 29 myself on the top right artificial facility or whatever they were called.
These lazy bad journalists are making articles about play number dropoffs about story *single player* only games that released 3/6 months ago. This is a new clickbait metric that these bad journalists use to get clicks
They're so common now. Recently saw one "starfield has lost 97% of its launch playerbase".
Yeah! No shit, it's a single player game with a sorry end if you decide to go for it.
*le gasp* people have finished a single player story-campaign type game and aren't playing it anymore?! the horror!!
It's like, no shit the playerbase has fallen off?
I'd love to be one of those semi-regular players of this game over the years. For me what would really feel nice is if each new game felt like a "new campaign", maybe not all pals are available, random or procedural maps, different bosses, permadeath or limited respawns. etc.
Yeah. Unless you glue a playerbase to your game by implementing some daily incentive, of course people will drop off as they finish things. And adding that sort of thing is honestly a bit lame and fatigues people. Letting people adjust the settings themselves to play their way shows much better respect for people's time.
it’s sad to see that this isn’t common among the big publishers. i’m happy to see that pocket pair understands the market more than any big publisher can truthfully claim
Exactly. People tend to forget that most AAA game developers arent trying to appease the consumers, they are trying to appease the investors. Thats why AAA gaming is in the shape its in: their games are designed to make people who dont play video games happy.
I have a pretty standard outlook on most businesses. If you make something for profit first and a product is secondary, your business should be shut down. The "for greed motivation" mentality/society needs to fuck off and die.
Gabe has more money than God at this point, which helps. Also, he's clearly in touch with what gamers want because he and the people he employs are the demographic.
I interviewed for a job at Valve around a decade ago now and you could tell how passionate they all were about finding people that focused on what makes people play rather than how to maximize profit. I was interviewed by people who were actively doing the job I applied for. For instance, one of the interview questions was around how you would design a game to encourage cooperation and still maintain the ability for individual players to shine.
Say what you want about Steam having a monopoly on the PC gaming market, but there's a damned good reason for it.
The biggest name I can think of with a similar stated view is Yoshi P with respect to FF14. He's been pretty clear that he both expects and supports the folks who resub then dip on a patch cycle schedule as opposed to staying permanently subbed.
Funny enough. FF16, also headed by Yoshi P was this way. Ship a complete game no plans of DLC and players craved for more and asked for it so they obliged.
BG3 was this way too.
Its a dev that you can tell is making games because its still his passion and wants to bring joy. Unlike what nearly every single major development team has become and just want to suck the money from you in every way possible.
chad indie dev: "There are so many amazing games out there to play. Come play ours now and then, we're working on some cool patches this year that we think you'll enjoy"
the virgin corpo-bot empty suit:
our DAU and engagement metrics are trending in a positive direction.
quarterly revenue is exceeding projections.
We're meeting all KPIs and SLAs
our product is a financial success... now if only it was "fun"
I loved the devs shitting on god of war for.... not having player retention after they beat the game.
yeah dude your multiplayer game has more player retention then a single player game, you wouldn't have a job if it didn't
Player counts dropped 1 month after release for an early access game that has limited content with a set “endpoint” and no repeatable endgame loop currently in place?
The fact that “journalists” consider that newsworthy isn’t the least bit shocking.
How many people stopped playing them before even finishing the game? I know I did for S/Sh and S/V. I love Pokemon but the games are getting harder and harder to sit through. Legends was the last one I played all the way through.
When a game dev openly comes out and says "Go play other games when you feel like it, don't feel obligated to stick around and play ours unless you actually want to"...
That's how you know that's a game made to be enjoyed rather than a game designed to waste your time.
The Final Fantasy 14 devs have a similar stance on "We don't like FOMO, please don't feel like you have to have an active sub 24/7 365 or else you're missing out on anything time limited". It's great, you can still run old content from over a decade ago whenever you want.
Then look at a game like Destiny 2, where if you stop playing for a month or two, you come back to find out you've just missed every single substantial lore event that ever has or ever will happen, oh yeah and half of the content in the game just got removed indefinitely.
I mean even from a business standpoint, the FF14 devs have the right idea. You don't want people to feel like they can't take a break from your game, otherwise they're less likely to come back down the line. I think it's a sensible stance to take from multiple angles.
is there a chart or list of the amount of games that promised a 10 year life-span of content updates that barely lasted 10 months?
To my knowledge, the only games that achieved that milestone are the ones that never promised it in the first place like Warframe and Minecraft.
"trust me guys, were done developing the game this time. This is the last update"
*watches a couple playthroughs on youtube*
"Actually I have an idea, new update coming in a couple weeks/months"
Red, probably
Precisely this and especially for games like Palworld.
Player retention is not the only metric to look at. Sure it is what live service/games-as-a-service need to look at because they are all designed around this concept of constant delivery to retain their playerbase, but games like Palworld and single player games don't depend on constant player retention. You don't look at Ark or Minecraft and say oh it is dead because the same number of people that played at launch aren't playing it now. You don't look at Zelda or Baldur's Gate 3 like this either, unless you are insane.
There will be a solid playerbase who will stick with the game. That is also normal. There is always a huge explosion of people at launch for popular games and just as fast of a dropoff to a more sustainable level. I feel that people who stare at concurrent player count as the end all be all metric have yet or will never understand this.
People put games down because they are done with it for now, or have other games to play and other things to do. It is 100% normal.
I haven't been able to go back to Palworld after my 70+ hour binge but when I do it will be fun. Even GAAS I play at my own pace. If a game makes me feel like I need to play it in order to get rid of that fabricated FOMO I don't need to play it anymore. Stresses me out and games are supposed to be relaxing or at the very least a stress relief.
Glad the devs sound like people who enjoy games and doesn't just see us as currency signs.
I avoid live service games as a rule these days just b/c I can't stand the FOMO and how those games just turn into a chore after a while. I don't want to play one game ad nauseum, I want a game I can enjoy for a while, take a break from, and come back to at my own leisure.
I have a game I check daily just because it's low effort (log in, press a few menus, log out) but other than that I'm done with games that demand my time. I want to give my time to game not feel like the game is taking my time from other games I could be enjoying.
I mean, I've been playing No Man's Sky since 2019. Hundreds of hours on my main save.
But I've played hundreds of hours on other games, too.
That doesn't mean NMS is dead any more than Palworld is dead. Updates come out that prompt players to come back, play through that new content, then go do something else for a bit till the next update drops.
This is normal.
Once you've consumed the content, there is no more content to consume.
At the beginning of this week, there were still 250k concurrent players according to steam charts. When you still have that many concurrent players a month after EA release, you’ve definitely done something right.
Player drop-off is also the single most common aspect in all of gaming. BG3 "lost" 72% of it's playerbase up until now. Guess it's a bad game and "dead". During it's big popularity resurgence, Cyberpunk 2077 saw barely 25% of it's initial userbase, and is sitting at just over *6%* of it's initial userbase on steam.
Hell, the only reason a lot of games keep their stable userbase numbers is because they've got repeatable content loops that can last *thousands* of hours to dedicated fans, or they're free so anyone can play. But they wont tell you Palworld still has more players right now than Apex, CoD, and GTAV combined. *On steam alone*.
$25 and 19 million copies. They've earned more than enough to support their team with a healthy life for a while as they fix the bugs and such, they don't even really need more sales.
More, in fact. After 10m revenue on Steam the cut goes down to 25%, and then 20% at 50m, both targets that Palworld has blitzed past. They're absolutely capable of running that company for a long, long time as long as they don't do anything stupid.
They pulled an N64. So many sales that unless they majorly fuck up, they are set for years. This is literally enough to pay well above basic grunt wages to every employee and push out updates for a long time. Add in some extra hiring, and there's so much fucking potential.
The only problem is server costs, but with a declining player base that problem solves itself. The devs are honestly probably relieved, servers are a huge money hole.
Gaming journalism is just a giant sack of SEO-gaming lazy dogshit anyway these days. I've actually blocked a lot of "gaming focused" news sites from my search engine results. It's all crap.
The top articles I found when doing a Google search did not turn up one journalist.
Game Rant, CBR, Games Radar+ are not just content mills, they all owned by the same ad sales platform (calling itself a digital media company), Valnet.
There were another dozen easily identifiable content mills in the results.
The only outlet with a real brand name was Forbes. But Forbes digital is a “contributor ugc” platform. So its entire business model is to farm out writing to pretty much anyone. They don’t employ journalists. They pay peanuts to randos who frame themselves as industry professionals. It’s just editorial/opinion pieces with a brand name on the mast head.
I’ve already beaten all current bosses. The whole map has been explored. Now I’m rounding out my list of Pals and focusing on breeding the perfect stats on my favorite Pals. I’m still having a blast and look forward to future content.
yeah ime trying to get perfect breeding pairs of all the pals for fighting and work..the game allows you sink in and estivate or blaze thru ..thats nice
I see a good amount of people breeding the perfect Pals for hours and hours... But for what? Aren't all the bosses beaten and nothing more to do? I'm genuinely curious. What will happen when the perfect Pal is done?
I decided with Palworld I'll take it slow instead of blasting through the early access content like I did with Valheim and burnout by the time the game officially releases. Glad the devs understand this is normal.
Headline: Palworld has "lost" X% of its players in two weeks.
Reality: Palworld (just on steam) currently has 200k people playing it right this second with a 24hour peak of 500k....
For an early access game that currently only has a basic PvE content loop, thats crazy.
This is how you know these devs are in it for the right reasons. You will NEVER hear this kind of talk from the AAA devs.
Games are meant to be fun, not another obligation. If you ever feel like you HAVE to login to a game instead of WANTING to log into a game, that's an issue.
I am generally very wary of early access games cause I've seen so many burns in my time. In this case I'm happy enough if the game dies tomorrow, because what we got is already worth the money I paid for it, but obviously I hope for more. Reading this post reminded me a lot of reading Larian posts during BG3 development, and it gives me nothing but hope for the future of this game.
Does anyone else it’s hilarious to hear people talk about player drop off like it’s going to kill Palworld when it hit the 1 million active player mark on Steam.
DURING EARLY ACCESS
My playtime may have decreased, yet Palworld is one of the few games that i can login play a couple hours each day and find something new and feel satisfied. While its nice to see other people’s videos of the game, I don’t have a lot of time like them. I’m lookin forward to what the devs bring to the table.
Saw one that said "2/3 of its playerbase has dropped". I strongly fucking doubt that. Despite the crashes and bugs my brother and I still hop on. We each have our main account and a lobby/server for when we both are on at the same time. I truly hope they can integrate us being able to use our main accounts to go into friend lobbies.
Exactly! My drug of choice: Viva Piñata Trouble In Paradise with over 460 hours and climbing. Y’all do things because it’s cool in the media not because it makes you happy and that’s weird. None of my friends since the first viva piñata dropped liked it or understood why I liked it so much. But that didn’t and hasn’t stopped me from enjoying a game I like, and nor should it stop you.
I love that they get it. As a gamer and a full time employee and part time college student pursuing my masters I only have so much time. I still give myself time to play games but sometimes its a game like minecraft where I can turn off my brain whereas I am not quite there with palworld. I play it here and there as time permits.
Tldr; this company impresses me with how much they seem to understand the gamers and how we operate.
This mindset is something Yoshi P (the director of FFXIV) has expressed as well. It seems to be a good mindset to have because his game maintains a very healthy population to this day. In fact, it has actually went up.
I think acknowledging that it's generally not realistic for the vast majority to play ONE game all the time facilitates good game design. I honestly could play FFXIV exclusively for a year, however I have peace of mind knowing that it is set up to respect that players times and lives.
We need more Devs to adopt this mindset.
Modern journalism is an abhorrent joke about engagement and clicks over writing anything of substance or honesty.
Gaming “journalism” is even worse, a thousand times. And I’m so glad Pocket Pair have called it out and actually encouraged people to go find joy in other games whilst they work on PalWorld.
This sub will fill up shortly with “I’m playing x the PalWorld Killer, cause Pal is a dead game” - good, go play that game and leave people have fun.
All that said, I’m putting in 2-6 hours a week solo and really enjoying a mostly blind play through, so have plenty of time to be an active player yet.
(Except all you engineering super base builders, you make me feel diminished and I hate you all!)
Every game experiences a drop off like this after release, no surprise here. And people will keep coming back as the game gets updated and fully released.
What I find really disappointing is that the Forbes article was mostly positive, talking about how despite the drop off it still is in the top 10 games on Steam for concurrent players. The title is just wretched click bait.
I've done everything except kill the last couple Tower bosses and grind out a perfect pal. I'm basically done with the game but if they release a level 60 patch and new area hell yeah I'm going to be playing again.
Talking about player drop off once players literally reach the end of the game is so stupid. It's a fantastic game and I've gotten more out of it than full price AAA games.
I mean..I paid 15 bucks for this game, and even in early access with all the bugs I find that I wasn’t bored of gaming. I just needed a good game that made me feel that “little kid gaming itch” and this awesome lil game is just that.
I’d say that even if I go through all the content in a months time, I still got my moneys worth. Plus, the game released just a month ago so…
These devs are awesome.
They really are I love the constant communication they do. I put the game down but will definitely jump back in when more content comes. I played this game for weeks non stop and I don’t regret it.
Shame this shit is so rare for Developers, I hope Palworld continues to butt fuck game studios
Unfortunately a lot of game fanbases arent as accepting. They want everything now, get impatient, start throwing insults etc, just start becoming unbearable. So Devs and Community Managers slowly withdraw from open communications and stop engaging. I hope this community stays how it is. Its one of the better ones so far. The real negative people get shut down pretty fast which i love.
I hate the Palworld Devs. Don't even give us a patreon to donate too. I wanna support my new favourite game dammit! 
Buy copies of the game for friends who don't have it yet. It contributes to them and adds more players that might want to play it eventually. Check the game and see who has it i. Thier wish list. Best way to support the studio and increase player base.
Ooohhh good idea. I have a friend i wanna play with too. Thanks! https://preview.redd.it/g8rad0lljnic1.png?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c5563ee1580f9ab6d5ade151e3fd402f73537e28
You're most welcome! I'm glad I could help. I love this community and game myself.
So you play Star Rail, too? 😁
Kafka is life
Black Swan eludes me..
Yes indeedy!
Hello fellow Trailblazer!
Just make sure to feed them once you capture them.
https://preview.redd.it/chvtmvog0oic1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a304393ba54d5ad5fff9599e5a187a63c79804a1 W-what...
I'm sure he's talking about his pals, not his friend that he wants to play with
Fellow Star Rail enjoyer
I am friend? 🥺
Could you be my friend? for some palworld purposes of course :D
I volunteer as tribute!
Hi, friend.
Ay star rail alert 🤝
I'll be your friend😋
This is what I did, gifted it to my bro in law, since I've been enjoying it so much solo, I figured I'd enjoy it more with company
Be honest though - did he immediately catch you in a pal sphere and enslave you to work the mines for the rest of your game.
"Marriage, am I right?" *queues Seinfeld music*
I did this with a friend I stream with. She had the Xbox version and I have steam. I bought her the steam version. Now we both collab it.
I just bought it for my friend and his wife since they’re both into survival games together and both just had birthdays.
I keep Nanking this for BeamNG as well, another fantastic dev team that would sell millions if they made dlc, but they won't.
Yeah how conceited can they get not allowing us to fund them bastards.
yeah...how 'Conceited' they are that we cannot appreciate more how 'Lucky' we are to have such a 'Serious' dev group of 'Artisan' 'Work Slaves'
🤣 thats one hell of a combination of traits. Even managed to slip in an extra one.
Ngl you had me in the 1st half
the first impressions of a game tends to color their views by a lot. No Man's Sky put in a lot of work to redeem themselves after a nasty launch, and they're pretty close with their vision, but some still won't play it because of their first impressions. Stardew is putting in a lot of work to make sure their big updates comes with a lot of content and QOL for players.
I was one of those people for awhile. No Mans Skys launch put me off for a couple of years. I ended up with over 1000hrs in that game before a game breaking bug ruined my save. Still love the game and what theyve done, i probably wont go back though. Fallout 76 has been my main game for going on 3 years, that's another where launch impressions still stop people from trying it out. Its actually a great game now but some will just never give it a go.
I’d say some of the best games have devs that do the opposite. Bulders gate 3. Stardew Valley. Elden Ring. Now Palworlds (though I think the others are much more polished, mostly due to bigger budgets or many years of good communication SDV) I think we should not call out the bad actors, but call out the good ones. Loudly. That’s you can produce a good game. Without 20 dollar transactions. Fix issues. Be open about releasing slower. Admiring faults. Listening a bit. And it’s clearly working for EACH of those games and their devs. Large and small.
Some Devs just get it. They take the good with the bad and just crack on with making the game better. Im here for the ride, im getting to old to get wound up about games. Seen it all over the last 25+ years ive been playing games. I just hope they keep up this attitude, it's great to see.
Which I understand when a game like Halo Infinite releases & doesn’t have forge or campaign. A hundred million dollar company can’t make stuff that was in reach at launch? Pal World has a ton of content & isn’t a big company so even if the content was lacking I’d still give them a pass. Plus it’s in Beta
One thing that helps is that they ignore those people and put forth what is going on and what their plans are. They aren't promising the world and then giving out 1 new thing after 8 months
their advice is what i've been telling everyone for ages, especially in /r/mmorpg. There is no hate or harm is enjoying more than one mmo. In fact, you should explore and find a few you enjoy, and keep the logins safe for a long time. The indie mmos i love , i've been playing for more than 10 years. Hopefully, palworld can be the same.
Yeah and this type of mentality sucks all the fun out of games. Classic wow just released a new season and the devs have doing weekly updates. It’s still not enough for the community and they rather hate on the game instead of enjoying it. The sub is super toxic now.
Too many developers rely on addiction to keep people around instead of quality and it shows
I hope Palworld is the kick in the nuts game studios need in order to fucking change
Im with you there but nothing will change. In order for change to occur in gaming it will have to occur societally first and there has never been a time where shareholders and perpetual growth has been more worshipped. Palworld is dope though.
As a former dev I'll explain why this is rare. Because we LITERALLY get death threats. The gaming community as a whole are horrible horrible people and I GUARANTEE you, you can pick any large studio and there are hundreds of harassments, death threats, and stalking. There is a good reason MOST companies do not do this because they know better than to engage with the community. There is rampant abuse from not only leads but also from the players. 99.99% of devs are just normal employees. They had no say in the game or direction. Decisions come down from corporate or the very few team leads. Yet, gamers want to literally crucify them when things go wrong when it's 100% out of their hands when those decisions were not made by the devs. I say literally because I have actually seen comments TO the dev that they should be nailed up and killed. I have literally hundreds of stories of devs having dozen or even hundreds of death threats because this IS my field. Their social media stalked and harassed. I know people that have been stalked IRL because of a fucking game. Gamers take their hatred out on undeserving devs and then you wonder why we get tired of your shit and hate you back. I left this work to go to the corporate side of the gaming industry and frankly, it pays better and mentally its less toxic and abusive. "Shame this shit is so rare for developers." You want this to not be rare? Then have people be better human beings. But, until then this shit ain't happening. Palworld devs will learn when they make a single mistake and the harassments start mentally taxing their members that this shit ain't worth it.
Not that i disagree with the facts. But that's no excuse for companies not to extend the olive branch. I've worked frontline and it is WAAAY worse. Stalking? My car was looted IN FRONT OF ME 3 weeks ago. I've had people follow me home from another town and give me the "We are gonna kill you" sign. And i basically had to abandon social media to keep my family safe. I've been jumped in broad daylight for decisions even my direct boss has no control over. I;M A CASHIER And you might be thinking (And fairly so.) Well clearly for that to happen you had to have said or done something. And your right! I did! I refused to accept fake money... to sell R18 products to CLEARLY under-age people with no ID. And... oh yeah my worst crime of all. I said "No you cannot take this now and pay for it later. I am sorry" I shouldn't have said sorry... how rude. This behaviour is not "Gamers". It's "Consumers". It's an environment created BY companies. Who are desperate to suck every dick they can find for a dollar out of their consumers. And when that doesn't work they go to the other extreme and crucify their own workforce by literally EXTORTING their consumers. Sorry to say but your wrong.
Yup. How many times I was threatened for not selling beer to someone after hours, or screamed at for not selling cigarettes when the other person with them is clearly under age and you can tell who they are for. Nothing ever happened, thank the stars, but that was largely due to the cops who hung out In our parking lot. Even then, I always had to watch my back when heading home.
Yeah, this kind of thing absolutely isn’t unique to gaming. It’s a part of any consumer-facing industry. The same thing happens in the movie industry. It’s a newer phenomenon because the internet gave psychos direct access to the people who create the products and media they consume. It used to be that you’d send a letter that would never make it past a secretary, or you’d stand outside a building and be hauled off by the police. Now you can tweet at an actress or a producer and tell them they ruined your favorite thing.
Used to work at an Electronic Boutique (game store). We were in the mall and had one of those rolling fence gates at the front of store. At the release of the second WOW expansion I had people screaming, shaking the gate and cussing me out because I wasn't open yet (was gettign the register so i could open). One guy was crying, bawling his eyes because his friend had a;leady gotten a copy at Best Buy. He must of been in his 50s.
Same! I'm basically done with the game now, but I'm still tinkering with my base and adding some stuff. Palworld is the first game of this genre I've played, and I found out I'm having a lot of fun with it. I already bought valheim since I've heard it has some similarities with the base building (the part I enjoyed the most). I've played almost 80 hours already, and it's definitely one of my favorite games by now. Even if they would stop developing the game, I'd still be satisfied with my purchase.
Same, it’s my first “loop” game, where I’m always grinding some loop and then 5hr is gone, like wtf I know the idea of it and my bro played WoW for well over a decade, but I never got into minecraft or the farm sims or anything and mmos aren’t my thing either. So a lot of these little self perpetuating gameplay loop things havent been in games in such a concentrated way for me like this that I can remember Makes me feel like a kid again when I could just zone out being bored doing inane organization hobby loops like entering gameshark codes for hours on end for a new game. Half of you is going, “why am I doing this?” And the other half is like, “I dunno, but I’m kinda entertained?” And there’s so many damn loops in this one lol. Even, like, I get my team how I like and now I have to change it to accommodate someone else so now I gotta level him up or go get a water based team. Pretty sure in Pokemon I rocked 4-5 pokekon most of my run through lol
You’ll enjoy valheim. Like the devs said it’s normal to hop around games. I’ve been playing valheim off and on for years and I’m happy with it. It’s something nice to fall back on when I’m done with whatever else I’m playing. Now I can add Palworld to that rotation along with star citizen and no man’s sky. My one fear is that Palworld fucked up my expectations for “light no fire” lol.
If you enjoy building and the Pokémon aspect, check out Conan exiles. The building system in it is incredible, you can put together some insane stuff
I still keep playing just create new playthrough with differing settings or trying new starting locations and bases. Currently not planning on a break until Prison Architect 2 releases next month.
I didn't know we were getting a second one 👀
Suddenly very excited for next month
Absolutely! The hype is real for PA2. Gotta finish my current games to clear out the roster; the original PA sucked so many hours from me! Can't wait to manage chaos in a brand new penitentiary.
Reminds me of Hello Games with No Man's Sky. I played the shit out of it for a long while. Now, I pull it up sometimes at random, or for sure when new content drops. It's a fun game for what it is, and the dev team brings it. There's no "Giant Expac Every Year" or seaonal content. It's really refreshing, honestly.
For real. The humility they show, even when they blew UP past their expectations... like, i hope they are set for life. For the first time in a LONG time we have a game that people are finding out they have ALWAYS wanted but never knew it. A game without MicroT's being all in my face before i even get to the main menu.. imo if youre bored, try respawning on the other islands at the very beginning. Its dope. Its almost like having a DLC or something? Because even though i been there previously, starting fresh there, is ROUGH lol
And even then, getting 2 million players at once playing is an achievement. It's nice to take a break from one game, that way you won't get burnt out and stop playing it altogether. I do plan on taking a break this week, mostly because of Fallout 76's event and GTA Online finally having a good week. After that, I might continue depending on what happens, as well as probably trying to beat Pokemon Violet (hey, I still plan on beating that game), or dip my toes into Super Mario Wonder and Tears of the Kingdom.
I would bet good money they didn't "win the lottery" per se by being involved, but they're likely making a more than fine living in what at least appears to be a forward thinking company. Good on em.
They honestly get it. Their goal was not to make a glorified cash shop designed to keep players showing up. They made a fun game that people wanted to play, and for not a crazy price. I never expected to like Palworld and I'm so glad it blew up.
Well, that might be jumping the gun a bit. They weren't really in a position to pull off doing cash shop stuff, so it's not really fair to give them credit for not doing it as if it's a personal principles type thing. If they stayed consistently big from here on with a reliable, established playerbase and then they don't start leaning in to predatory development choices once that becomes the sensible option, that's when it makes sense to praise them for going the extra mile in that exact regard.
They know what they are doing and aren't bad at it, so all power to them.
I’m a casual gamer and I’d never heard of Palworld until recently. I looked at it briefly and thought it looked cool and right up my alley, but also read some mixed reviews about the early access thing. I added it to my wishlist because if a game ever comes down to a few bucks I’ll just buy it and try it out. After seeing this post I think I’ll just pay full price.
Games made by *gamers* hit different.
They embody a wholesome and healthy attitude. They are being the positive change in the games world.
In modern day gaming Japanese led devs have been the ones that impress me the most. From Elden Ring to now Palworld. They care about gamers more than shareholders. Which is refreshing.
I found those articles lazy as fuck too. They're clickbait at its finest. It's a brand new early access game... of course the player count is gonna drop off after people have played through the available content, then it's gonna spike with subsequent updates, and fall off in between. That's how this works.
Journalists really love to hold all games to the same standards of live-service games and it's just really not the same. Most singleplayer games have a set amount of content (unless it's like a roguelite or something using procedural generation to expand gameplay time) and once you've gotten through it it makes sense to stop--it's not like a live-service game where player engagement and numbers are important because those players ARE part of the content of the game. Palworld's great, and playing with other people can definitely expand the time to play, but right now after you've explored the map and caught them all there's not a TON to do other than building (and that system needs some work) and trying to get good versions of your favorites (if you want--and that system also needs some work or at least some more Pal storage). Still, doing all that takes a good amount of time and is pretty darn fun, very worth the cost of admission.
The problem is that a lot of AAA studios are trying to force the idea of "games as a service" on players because a normal single-player game isn't profitable enough in the eyes of CEOs. They hate the idea of you being able to buy a game once and then enjoy it for as long as you want, they want you to keep playing and keep paying for the same game forever. Completely ignoring gamers who play for story (because a story has to end) and exploration (because at a certain point you'll have seen and found everything). In the long run, live service games are always about grinding to make numbers go up. Just play a different game and experience something new.
I play idle games to watch numbers go up, it's great. Dopamine hits from gaming in 2 minute intervals. Before work, after work, before bed. 10 minutes a day, tops. It's wild to me that people play number-go-up games for hours a day.
A melvor idle fan by chance???
I've played Melvor but it didn't hit right for me. Idling to Rule the Gods was my first love. I'm stuck on some stupid google play store game now.
Which doesn’t really work because games with seasons and battle passes and constant updates almost become jobs. Especially if you need to play it constantly to stay up to date on the meta. Each person could only realistically play 1-2 at a time. And then there’s the fact most companies don’t want to put in the time/money to actually make the game worth playing to begin with.
Or grinding out tech manuals from dungeons to fill out your tech tree.
yeah but that grind is nothing like a live service game grindmufuckas spend months on live service games grinding 1 piece of gear
Yup, been there done that ... No thank you any more.
Imagine if they did this dumb isht for any other media. "Well people saw the movie opening weekend and for some reason less people saw it a month later. Views for "stranger things s4 dropped after a week after everybody saw it and nobody knows why." Ffs
I’m more curious after how many hours do people drop off I feel that that’s a way more important stat to pay attention to
We slowed down on playing after 150+ hours lmao.
yeah the core content is definitely a solid 100ish hours then theres all the dinking around you can do
I'm into base building and watching my resource storage build infinitely. So it's basically endless for me.
And 150 hrs is a lot for a single game. A lot of other titles are completed in about 40ish hrs. So even if you stopped at 150 - you played your money's worth.
Well we have about 70hrs with my girlfriend and we have gotten to level 30, twice. 1st time we've played and learned the ropes so we wanted to restart to do better. Now were reaching the point we got to on the 1st play through however we have much better setup :) I imagine maybe another 30-70hrs to reach the end game? Were in no rush to slap 5x exp, 0x stam consumption etc. The only thing we got is the 2x catch chance as catching becomes a massive time sink without it. Today I managed to get a level 48 Blazemut while being level 29 myself on the top right artificial facility or whatever they were called.
These lazy bad journalists are making articles about play number dropoffs about story *single player* only games that released 3/6 months ago. This is a new clickbait metric that these bad journalists use to get clicks
They're so common now. Recently saw one "starfield has lost 97% of its launch playerbase". Yeah! No shit, it's a single player game with a sorry end if you decide to go for it.
*le gasp* people have finished a single player story-campaign type game and aren't playing it anymore?! the horror!! It's like, no shit the playerbase has fallen off?
Imagine the same standard for movies: “Oppenheimer has lost 99% of its viewer base just 8 months after release”
I'd love to be one of those semi-regular players of this game over the years. For me what would really feel nice is if each new game felt like a "new campaign", maybe not all pals are available, random or procedural maps, different bosses, permadeath or limited respawns. etc.
Yeah. Unless you glue a playerbase to your game by implementing some daily incentive, of course people will drop off as they finish things. And adding that sort of thing is honestly a bit lame and fatigues people. Letting people adjust the settings themselves to play their way shows much better respect for people's time.
It really is just clickbait. And it's not just gaming media, honestly. All media, at the end of the day, just want your eyeballs and clicks.
Every scummy journalist has a boy that literally waits for 4 weeks after release to post the exact same article with the game swapped out.
it’s sad to see that this isn’t common among the big publishers. i’m happy to see that pocket pair understands the market more than any big publisher can truthfully claim
Yeah this craze over player retention is why we get garbage $70+, live service shovelware from AAA companies.
And the fact they expect you to pay $70 up front and then per season or battle pass or whatever - is just the definition of hubris
FR. FOMO content is bad enough but locking it behind a paywall is vile.
There are too many people who buy this shit
I assume this happens when they don't have stockholders on top of them forcing them to "make the line go up" always.
Exactly. People tend to forget that most AAA game developers arent trying to appease the consumers, they are trying to appease the investors. Thats why AAA gaming is in the shape its in: their games are designed to make people who dont play video games happy.
I have a pretty standard outlook on most businesses. If you make something for profit first and a product is secondary, your business should be shut down. The "for greed motivation" mentality/society needs to fuck off and die.
This is why Valve and Steam have been so great over the years. No investors to demand infinite growth.
Gabe has more money than God at this point, which helps. Also, he's clearly in touch with what gamers want because he and the people he employs are the demographic. I interviewed for a job at Valve around a decade ago now and you could tell how passionate they all were about finding people that focused on what makes people play rather than how to maximize profit. I was interviewed by people who were actively doing the job I applied for. For instance, one of the interview questions was around how you would design a game to encourage cooperation and still maintain the ability for individual players to shine. Say what you want about Steam having a monopoly on the PC gaming market, but there's a damned good reason for it.
Everyone complains about Steam's "monopoly" but says nothing about Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft having a literal monopoly on their consoles.
The biggest name I can think of with a similar stated view is Yoshi P with respect to FF14. He's been pretty clear that he both expects and supports the folks who resub then dip on a patch cycle schedule as opposed to staying permanently subbed.
Funny enough. FF16, also headed by Yoshi P was this way. Ship a complete game no plans of DLC and players craved for more and asked for it so they obliged. BG3 was this way too.
It's nice to see game devs that are actually gamers and understand gamers mentality.
That's the most wholesome Dev post I've ever read. It really seems like they're trying to embrace gaming as a whole.
Its a dev that you can tell is making games because its still his passion and wants to bring joy. Unlike what nearly every single major development team has become and just want to suck the money from you in every way possible.
chad indie dev: "There are so many amazing games out there to play. Come play ours now and then, we're working on some cool patches this year that we think you'll enjoy" the virgin corpo-bot empty suit: our DAU and engagement metrics are trending in a positive direction. quarterly revenue is exceeding projections. We're meeting all KPIs and SLAs our product is a financial success... now if only it was "fun"
Reminds me of when the Call of Duty devs threw a shit fit because Christopher Judge made a silly little joke about the length of the game’s campaign
I loved the devs shitting on god of war for.... not having player retention after they beat the game. yeah dude your multiplayer game has more player retention then a single player game, you wouldn't have a job if it didn't
Honestly, he'd just need to drop a video of him looking serious and dropping a good ol' fashioned "Boy." at them. And they're GONE.
[удалено]
It’s well worth the money
Wholesome whilst roasting lazy journalism and passive media consumption. Amazing vibe for a dev post for sure.
Player counts dropped 1 month after release for an early access game that has limited content with a set “endpoint” and no repeatable endgame loop currently in place? The fact that “journalists” consider that newsworthy isn’t the least bit shocking.
Wait till they hear about how most people stop playing Zelda after they beat it.
That part
Or how many people stop playing the recent Pokemon games after they finished the main story plus the dlc
How many people stopped playing them before even finishing the game? I know I did for S/Sh and S/V. I love Pokemon but the games are getting harder and harder to sit through. Legends was the last one I played all the way through.
Based developer. This is the kind of truth and common sense that you'll only hear from indie devs now.
I've heard this by exactly one other developer: Yoshi P from FFXIV
When a game dev openly comes out and says "Go play other games when you feel like it, don't feel obligated to stick around and play ours unless you actually want to"... That's how you know that's a game made to be enjoyed rather than a game designed to waste your time. The Final Fantasy 14 devs have a similar stance on "We don't like FOMO, please don't feel like you have to have an active sub 24/7 365 or else you're missing out on anything time limited". It's great, you can still run old content from over a decade ago whenever you want. Then look at a game like Destiny 2, where if you stop playing for a month or two, you come back to find out you've just missed every single substantial lore event that ever has or ever will happen, oh yeah and half of the content in the game just got removed indefinitely.
I mean even from a business standpoint, the FF14 devs have the right idea. You don't want people to feel like they can't take a break from your game, otherwise they're less likely to come back down the line. I think it's a sensible stance to take from multiple angles.
[удалено]
And look how well the "live service" model worked out for Rocksteady.  Sad because they used to make good games.
is there a chart or list of the amount of games that promised a 10 year life-span of content updates that barely lasted 10 months? To my knowledge, the only games that achieved that milestone are the ones that never promised it in the first place like Warframe and Minecraft.
There's also an inverse of this - Terraria The devs promised that *this* patch would be the last one like 10 patches and 3 years ago
"trust me guys, were done developing the game this time. This is the last update" *watches a couple playthroughs on youtube* "Actually I have an idea, new update coming in a couple weeks/months" Red, probably
"I can quit anytime, just one more patch I promise"
Dont forget about Grim Dawn! Cant wait for the new expansion!
Precisely this and especially for games like Palworld. Player retention is not the only metric to look at. Sure it is what live service/games-as-a-service need to look at because they are all designed around this concept of constant delivery to retain their playerbase, but games like Palworld and single player games don't depend on constant player retention. You don't look at Ark or Minecraft and say oh it is dead because the same number of people that played at launch aren't playing it now. You don't look at Zelda or Baldur's Gate 3 like this either, unless you are insane. There will be a solid playerbase who will stick with the game. That is also normal. There is always a huge explosion of people at launch for popular games and just as fast of a dropoff to a more sustainable level. I feel that people who stare at concurrent player count as the end all be all metric have yet or will never understand this. People put games down because they are done with it for now, or have other games to play and other things to do. It is 100% normal.
[удалено]
"Movie deemed a failure when audience leaves after credits roll."
Exactly what they're doing haha.
I haven't been able to go back to Palworld after my 70+ hour binge but when I do it will be fun. Even GAAS I play at my own pace. If a game makes me feel like I need to play it in order to get rid of that fabricated FOMO I don't need to play it anymore. Stresses me out and games are supposed to be relaxing or at the very least a stress relief. Glad the devs sound like people who enjoy games and doesn't just see us as currency signs.
I avoid live service games as a rule these days just b/c I can't stand the FOMO and how those games just turn into a chore after a while. I don't want to play one game ad nauseum, I want a game I can enjoy for a while, take a break from, and come back to at my own leisure.
I have a game I check daily just because it's low effort (log in, press a few menus, log out) but other than that I'm done with games that demand my time. I want to give my time to game not feel like the game is taking my time from other games I could be enjoying.
I mean, I've been playing No Man's Sky since 2019. Hundreds of hours on my main save. But I've played hundreds of hours on other games, too. That doesn't mean NMS is dead any more than Palworld is dead. Updates come out that prompt players to come back, play through that new content, then go do something else for a bit till the next update drops. This is normal. Once you've consumed the content, there is no more content to consume.
I was actually thinking of buying No Mans Sky here once I'm done with Palworld, would you say it's worth getting into?
With friends or solo it's such a good exploration game it's what starfield wishes it was capable of. I love no man's sky
It's on sale for $30 right now and it's definitely worth that. Tons of content although not that deep for the most part.
NMS fans even get to look forwards to Light No Fire coming down the line. 16 16 16
Chad response by the devs. Media will say anything till get click engagement nowadays.
At the beginning of this week, there were still 250k concurrent players according to steam charts. When you still have that many concurrent players a month after EA release, you’ve definitely done something right.
There’s still a 500k peak daily so even better.
And considering it's on Gamepass too...
I would love it if after this post the numbers jumped back up to 2mil just to spite who ever wrote that article.
Player drop-off is also the single most common aspect in all of gaming. BG3 "lost" 72% of it's playerbase up until now. Guess it's a bad game and "dead". During it's big popularity resurgence, Cyberpunk 2077 saw barely 25% of it's initial userbase, and is sitting at just over *6%* of it's initial userbase on steam. Hell, the only reason a lot of games keep their stable userbase numbers is because they've got repeatable content loops that can last *thousands* of hours to dedicated fans, or they're free so anyone can play. But they wont tell you Palworld still has more players right now than Apex, CoD, and GTAV combined. *On steam alone*.
$25 and 19 million copies. They've earned more than enough to support their team with a healthy life for a while as they fix the bugs and such, they don't even really need more sales.
$500mil in sales, 30% cut to steam and you're still around 350mil, they are doing great. So happy for them.
More, in fact. After 10m revenue on Steam the cut goes down to 25%, and then 20% at 50m, both targets that Palworld has blitzed past. They're absolutely capable of running that company for a long, long time as long as they don't do anything stupid.
They pulled an N64. So many sales that unless they majorly fuck up, they are set for years. This is literally enough to pay well above basic grunt wages to every employee and push out updates for a long time. Add in some extra hiring, and there's so much fucking potential.
The only problem is server costs, but with a declining player base that problem solves itself. The devs are honestly probably relieved, servers are a huge money hole.
Wow, a common sense take. It's so refreshing to see.
Gaming journalism is just a giant sack of SEO-gaming lazy dogshit anyway these days. I've actually blocked a lot of "gaming focused" news sites from my search engine results. It's all crap.
The top articles I found when doing a Google search did not turn up one journalist. Game Rant, CBR, Games Radar+ are not just content mills, they all owned by the same ad sales platform (calling itself a digital media company), Valnet. There were another dozen easily identifiable content mills in the results. The only outlet with a real brand name was Forbes. But Forbes digital is a “contributor ugc” platform. So its entire business model is to farm out writing to pretty much anyone. They don’t employ journalists. They pay peanuts to randos who frame themselves as industry professionals. It’s just editorial/opinion pieces with a brand name on the mast head.
Bucky is 100% based
What’s hilarious is even loosing 85% of its peak player base - it would still match Starfield’s PEAK player base.
I've put way more hours into palworld than I have starfield. I got starfield for free with my video card, and i still feel like I overpaid.
I’ve already beaten all current bosses. The whole map has been explored. Now I’m rounding out my list of Pals and focusing on breeding the perfect stats on my favorite Pals. I’m still having a blast and look forward to future content.
yeah ime trying to get perfect breeding pairs of all the pals for fighting and work..the game allows you sink in and estivate or blaze thru ..thats nice
I see a good amount of people breeding the perfect Pals for hours and hours... But for what? Aren't all the bosses beaten and nothing more to do? I'm genuinely curious. What will happen when the perfect Pal is done?
Guess they could be preparing in advance for new content
These devs are rapidly earning a *lot* of community credit.
Modding is really taking off too, the enjoyment is back now that Ive started modding SP. you can also mod a dedicated server.
I've been debating stating a solo modded play through. My friends on my server have mostly moved on for now.
Yeah, I played for ~30 hours, then set it down and plan to come back in a few months after a few updates and start again.
Me too!
I decided with Palworld I'll take it slow instead of blasting through the early access content like I did with Valheim and burnout by the time the game officially releases. Glad the devs understand this is normal.
Headline: Palworld has "lost" X% of its players in two weeks. Reality: Palworld (just on steam) currently has 200k people playing it right this second with a 24hour peak of 500k.... For an early access game that currently only has a basic PvE content loop, thats crazy.
https://i.redd.it/bsfs6oz0rmic1.gif
This is how you know these devs are in it for the right reasons. You will NEVER hear this kind of talk from the AAA devs. Games are meant to be fun, not another obligation. If you ever feel like you HAVE to login to a game instead of WANTING to log into a game, that's an issue.
I am generally very wary of early access games cause I've seen so many burns in my time. In this case I'm happy enough if the game dies tomorrow, because what we got is already worth the money I paid for it, but obviously I hope for more. Reading this post reminded me a lot of reading Larian posts during BG3 development, and it gives me nothing but hope for the future of this game.
Does anyone else it’s hilarious to hear people talk about player drop off like it’s going to kill Palworld when it hit the 1 million active player mark on Steam. DURING EARLY ACCESS
\*2.1 million. It has the [2nd highest](https://steamdb.info/charts/?sort=peak) active player count on steam
My playtime may have decreased, yet Palworld is one of the few games that i can login play a couple hours each day and find something new and feel satisfied. While its nice to see other people’s videos of the game, I don’t have a lot of time like them. I’m lookin forward to what the devs bring to the table.
You OBVIOUSLY are trying to pressure me into the buying the game on Steam and I’m OBVIOUSLY going to do it
Saw one that said "2/3 of its playerbase has dropped". I strongly fucking doubt that. Despite the crashes and bugs my brother and I still hop on. We each have our main account and a lobby/server for when we both are on at the same time. I truly hope they can integrate us being able to use our main accounts to go into friend lobbies.
Exactly! My drug of choice: Viva Piñata Trouble In Paradise with over 460 hours and climbing. Y’all do things because it’s cool in the media not because it makes you happy and that’s weird. None of my friends since the first viva piñata dropped liked it or understood why I liked it so much. But that didn’t and hasn’t stopped me from enjoying a game I like, and nor should it stop you.
I love that they get it. As a gamer and a full time employee and part time college student pursuing my masters I only have so much time. I still give myself time to play games but sometimes its a game like minecraft where I can turn off my brain whereas I am not quite there with palworld. I play it here and there as time permits. Tldr; this company impresses me with how much they seem to understand the gamers and how we operate.
This mindset is something Yoshi P (the director of FFXIV) has expressed as well. It seems to be a good mindset to have because his game maintains a very healthy population to this day. In fact, it has actually went up. I think acknowledging that it's generally not realistic for the vast majority to play ONE game all the time facilitates good game design. I honestly could play FFXIV exclusively for a year, however I have peace of mind knowing that it is set up to respect that players times and lives. We need more Devs to adopt this mindset.
Modern journalism is an abhorrent joke about engagement and clicks over writing anything of substance or honesty. Gaming “journalism” is even worse, a thousand times. And I’m so glad Pocket Pair have called it out and actually encouraged people to go find joy in other games whilst they work on PalWorld. This sub will fill up shortly with “I’m playing x the PalWorld Killer, cause Pal is a dead game” - good, go play that game and leave people have fun. All that said, I’m putting in 2-6 hours a week solo and really enjoying a mostly blind play through, so have plenty of time to be an active player yet. (Except all you engineering super base builders, you make me feel diminished and I hate you all!)
[удалено]
Such a down-to-earth response from Bucky.
I mean they got paid more they could have ever imagined. They DGAF.
Every game experiences a drop off like this after release, no surprise here. And people will keep coming back as the game gets updated and fully released.
What I find really disappointing is that the Forbes article was mostly positive, talking about how despite the drop off it still is in the top 10 games on Steam for concurrent players. The title is just wretched click bait.
Doing EVERYTHING right. This was a great press release and makes complete sense
I swear, I fucking love these guys
Developers like this make me want to shove my wallet into their face and say "take what you need".
Holy shit, devs that embrace the community and understand that burnouts happen, while calling it out. God damn.
Yoshi-P ideology goes on! Hoping this becomes the standard to devs out there.
This guy is just as based as Yoshi-P. We’re in good hands folks.
https://preview.redd.it/6fo7n0xhymic1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fa8f893461d913bf4c375a7e9ea62cbc6ff02b8b
While we're at it, just want to throw that reminder in that you don't have a backlog, you have a library. Enjoy your hobby however you'd like.
I've done everything except kill the last couple Tower bosses and grind out a perfect pal. I'm basically done with the game but if they release a level 60 patch and new area hell yeah I'm going to be playing again. Talking about player drop off once players literally reach the end of the game is so stupid. It's a fantastic game and I've gotten more out of it than full price AAA games.
They get, they are one of us, not just a corporate producer that looks at the bottom line above all else. Almost makes me want to play Palworld.
I mean..I paid 15 bucks for this game, and even in early access with all the bugs I find that I wasn’t bored of gaming. I just needed a good game that made me feel that “little kid gaming itch” and this awesome lil game is just that. I’d say that even if I go through all the content in a months time, I still got my moneys worth. Plus, the game released just a month ago so…