Palworld game has driven more than 19 million players crazy

Studio Pocket Pair je pred kratkim potrdil, da se trenutno v njihovih svetovih potepa več kot 19 milijonov igralcev na osebnih računalnikih in konzolah Xbox. V nekem trenutku je igro hkrati igralo več kot 2 milijona igričarjev – in to so podatki samo za platformo Steam. Za primerjavo, ena izmed najboljših iger vseh časov, Baldur’s Gate 3, je imela na vrhuncu 875.000 sočasnih igralcev na Steamu.

Where does this attraction come from? The Palworld game was called "Pokemon with guns" by the fans, we also played it intensively in the editorial office and we agree with the statement, although there are other elements in the foreground (struggle for survival, building bases...). The idea of Pokemon in a more "adult" setting has been something that has been on the minds of fans for many years, but Nintendo has never deviated from its established formula. Good thing other studios don't have the same reservations.

Palworld was released in early access on January 19th, and since then it's only been climbing. It is also available in the Xbox Game Pass subscription, which is certainly one of the reasons for the high number of players.

The studio recently released a statement on social media thanking all the fans for their incredible success. They revealed that they sold around 12 million copies on Steam and an additional 7 million on Xbox, for a total of 19 million. Xbox Game Pass is breaking records as well, recently becoming the biggest third-party developer release in the service's history.

In their thanks, the developers pledged to keep up a similar pace and focus on new content and fixing existing bugs. The Xbox version of the game has a bit more issues than the desktop version. They recently released a patch that fixes some nagging bugs and reliability issues, but players are still reporting some issues.

On the one hand, Palworld is also a victim of its own success. The developers never in their wildest dreams imagined such a response, so this rush of players must have taken them by surprise. So far, the problems with accessing the servers have been fairly mild, which is good news.

They also revealed what awaits us all in the near future. They will add combat between human players (PVP), introduce new raid bosses, implement migration between servers, improve the way bases are built, add new islands, beasts and technologies. Obviously, there will be no shortage of content, even though the world is quite barren and empty at the moment. There are enough pals, even dungeons, where unique bosses and treasures are hidden, can be found on every other corner, but they are very monotonous and repetitive.

The concept is undeniably fun, but at this point we spend more time building personalized bases than actually hunting beasts.

The success also brings criticism and attention from Nintendo, which has so far only commented on the comparison with their Pokemon brand by saying that they are "investigating the case", but there have been no legal actions yet. An additional Pokemon "mod" has surfaced that introduces some monsters to the game that are unmistakably similar to Japanese creations, and in this case, Nintendo acted immediately.

Have you tried the game? What do you like the most? What could be improved?