Palworld is the top-selling game on Steam right now and the servers are struggling to handle the load
The Pokémon-with-guns-and-abusive-labor-practices game Palworld is off to a roaring early access launch on Steam, racking up 370,000 concurrent users (and counting) in its first day of release. That's proving to be a bit of a problem for the game's servers, which are buckling under the stream, but developer Pocketpair says it's working on the problem, and in the meantime says you should just keep hammering on it until you get it.
To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson's thoughts on Snakes on a Plane, people either want to play this game or they don't. I think the concept is just awful enough to be potentially funny—you can literally eat your Pals if you're feeling peckish and they're not serving any other useful purpose—but Lincoln Carpenter found it mostly off-putting and gross, saying it «could be a delight if it wasn't so invested in being awful,»
«It's over-committing to the bit, except the bit in this case is, well, abusive labor conditions and animal cruelty,» he wrote after spending some time with it. «And not only is the bit bad—it's actively making the rest of the game worse… The crafting and survival in Palworld is only interesting when it's driving me to make decisions on how I deploy my Pals, but instead of doubling down on what sets it apart, Palworld draws out its progression just so I can terrorize my Pals for a shortcut.»
Whether Palworld will be able to keep things rolling once the gag wears off is an open question, but right now curiosity rules the roost. It's currently the top-selling game on Steam, and at this moment boasts 370,059 concurrent players, according to Steam Charts. That's enough to put it near the top of Steam's top 100 most-play games, between Apex Legends and PUBG—not bad for a weird Poké-knockoff.
Alas, with the good news comes some bad. «Hello everyone, We are blown away with the response to Palworld and we're doing our best to respond to your issues!» Pocketpair tweeted.
«Currently, our server provider is reporting that due to the
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