Palworld dev slams player count criticism, says fans ‘don’t need to feel guilty’ for game-hopping

Palworld reached nearly unprecedented highs, with more than two million active players on Steam alone less than two weeks after launch. Those numbers have drastically dwindled over time, but at least one developer is far from worried and doesn’t want players feeling “guilty” for dipping out. 

Bucky, the community manager for several of Pocketpair’s games, including Palworld, is calling reporting of the roughly 70 percent decline in the game’s active users on Steam over the last few weeks “lazy.” It isn’t a hit at the people writing those articles specifically but more acting as a way to explain that it is no big deal since Palworld isn’t meant to hold players like some live-service games. 

“You don’t need to feel bad about [leaving],” Bucky said on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Feb.14. “Palworld, like many games before it, isn’t in a position to pump out massive amounts of new content on a weekly basis. New content will come, and it’s going to be awesome, but these things take a little bit of time.”

In an era where a lot of players are tired of seeing so many games as a service titles release and try to dominate your time, like Fortnite or Destiny 2, Palworld isn’t trying to fill that space. Despite coming out of nowhere as a mega-hit, Pocketpair is treating Palworld as an experience closer to something like Minecraft that can be enjoyed on your own time in different ways. 

According to Bucky, the dev team felt that the game would perform well but was blown away by the more than 19 million players who have spent time with Palworld since launch—even as it remains in early access. Everyone working on the game is actively trying to address the most glaring bugs and issues while preparing future updates, but the developer isvery aware not everyone will stick with their game while waiting for new content. 

Internally, the team isn’t viewing the dip in active players as a problem. Instead, they understand that some users got everything they could out of their time with Palworld since picking it up and are moving on to something else. It is an inevitability when it comes to entertainment that your audience will ebb and flow based on interest and your content release schedule—which Pocketpair is aware of and encourages. 

“There are so many amazing games out there to play; you don’t need to feel guilty about hopping from game to game,” Bucky said. “If you are 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.”

Bucky specifically encourages players looking for other games to try to search through Indie tags to support smaller devs and find “hidden gems” to fill the void. 

Even with the decline in player count, Palworld remains squarely in Steam’s top 10 games and hits over 500,000 concurrent users per day. That number will continue to dip as more players explore the entire map or reach the end of the early access version’s story, though future updates should spice things up with PvP and other new features.