Highlights

  • Palworld's popularity led to fluctuations in player count, but it remains a successful indie game.
  • The number of players saw a recent spike due to the Sakurajima expansion and Steam Summer Sale.
  • Global Community Manager Bucky urges players arguing over player counts to enjoy the game without worrying about that.

One of Palworld's top public figures is trying to calm down the monster-catching game's fans, many of whom are getting embroiled in arguments online over the game's player count. Palworld hit a surprisingly high wave of popularity when it launched in Early Access in January, and while the player count has had its ups and downs since then, Global Community Manager Bucky says that's nothing out of the ordinary.

Palworld hit a sales milestone just five days after its Early Access launch, selling more than 7 million copies in less than a week, which is an impressive feat for indie publisher/developer Pocket Pair. While the game's all-time-high of more than 2.1 million active players has dipped significantly since that time, its critical success sits in equal measure with its commercial success. Both its recent and all-time reviews on Steam are listed as Very Positive, with 93 percent of its more than 264,000 reviewers giving it the thumbs up.

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Recently, there has been another huge player spike for Palworld, as numbers from late June have seen the peak active player counts more than quadruple, from about 30,000 players during most of the month to around 135,000 on June 27. While there are multiple factors that could have affected this, such as the recent release of the free Sakurajima expansion and a 25 percent price reduction during the Steam Summer Sale, Bucky is urging players to simply enjoy the game and not split hairs over how many people are playing. "It doesn’t matter," he wrote on Twitter. "Palworld had 2mil, then it had 15k, now it has 140k…it’s not something to get angry about. In a few weeks it’ll go down again, and next major update it’ll go up. That’s just how it works."

Palworld Official Doesn't Want Fans Worrying About Player Counts

Undoubtedly, the latest major update to Palworld, which launched on June 27, is a driving force behind the game's recent surge in popularity, bringing a lot of new content to the game. In addition to adding a new island, Sakurajima, to the world map, the expansion also introduces a new enemy faction in the form of the Moonflowers, along with an oil rig controlled by the Rayne Syndicate, a new arena mode for staging battles, and a total of 24 new Pals and variants of existing Pals.

While Bucky is certain that the game will see another dip in its player count once the initial wave of excitement over Sakurajima drops off, he's more interested in making sure each player is having fun with the game and doesn't want to see fans becoming stressed out over trying to defend it in fights with strangers on social media. "If you don’t like, move on," he said. "There’s countless other games out there to try."