Palworld Dev Addresses ‘Dead Game’ Debate: ‘Who Cares if There’s Only Five People Playing?’
Our obsession with the concept of the “dead game” and player counts is unhealthy for the video game industry and gamers, one of the developers behind Palworld has said.
Palworld, dubbed “Pokémon with guns,” launched in early access form to record-breaking success. It is the second most-played game ever on Steam, with an incredible concurrent player count of 2,101,867 on Valve’s platform. Only battle royale PUBG is ahead of Palworld in Steam’s all-time peak concurrents chart.
Palworld’s Steam concurrents have fallen since that explosive launch earlier this year, and now usually hit a peak in the tens of thousands rather than millions. The decline has caused some to call Palworld a “dead game,” but it is far from the only game to be called that in recent years.
For example, Rocksteady’s catastrophic Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, whose Steam concurrents usually peak in the hundreds of players, was called a dead game upon its release. Arrowhead's Helldivers 2, Ubisoft's Skull & Bones, and Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 are also often called dead games. Sony’s live service hero shooter Concord has been labeled "dead on arrival” before launch because of low beta concurrents on Steam.
The “dead game” narrative is exacerbated by an industry currently pumping out more live service games than the market can perhaps support, or even wants, and by publishers who walk away from their live service games amid low player numbers. This month Capcom announced plans to move on from dinosaur-themed shooter Exoprimal just a year after launch, with Steam concurrents brutally low.
John “Bucky” Buckley, community chief at Palworld developer Pocketpair, has been a vocal critic of the “dead game” phrase, and in social media posts has called on the industry, media, and gamers to ditch the fixation on concurrents and player counts.
Bucky followed up on these posts in an interview with YouTube channel Going Indie for a video titled, ‘Dead Games Are A Good Thing, Actually.' In it, Bucky called out
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