1.3 million fewer players on Steam: Palworld sets a new negative record.
Overnight, the survival game with Pokémon-like animals and miniguns became the first surprise hit of 2024. On January 28th, Palworld reached a peak of over 2 million simultaneous players.
Now the controversial survival hit is setting another record, this time not so nice: In just two weeks, Palworld loses over 1.3 million players on Steam. More than any other game in the same period of time. We take a closer look at the numbers.
Player loss: 1.3 million fewer than two weeks ago
Since its release on January 19th, Palworld’s player numbers have increased daily, until they reached 2,101,867 concurrent Steam players on January 28th. In the following days, the number of players decreased again until it leveled off at an average of 600,000 players last week.
What seems highly dramatic at first glance is actually not that catastrophic: Palworld is currently still in second place among the most played Steam games, directly behind Counter-Strike 2 with around 800,000 players.
The extraordinary survival game with cute pals and tough weapons exploded overnight, but cannot retain the number of players.
We remember: At the all-time peak, Palworld even managed to overtake the long-running favorite and only lost the battle for the crown to PUBG, which has a maximum number of players of over 3 million. It is also nothing unusual for a game to lose players after its initial hype and was to be expected in the short or long term with Palworld.
Nevertheless: No other game on Steam has lost so many players in such a short time. Yes, even PUBG no longer has 3,257,248 players and has leveled off at an average of 300,000-400,000. But this downward trend lasted months and not two weeks like now at Palworld.
Even a Lost Ark, which has also lost over 1.2 million players since its release and peak of 1,325,305, was able to keep the players a little longer
The future of Palworld
There are of course a few factors to consider when looking at the numbers:
The developers also have big plans: The studio announced on Twitter that they are desperately looking for new developers.
Link to Twitter content
There is still so much we want to do at Palworld, but we are totally lacking colleagues!!!
We’re hiring for all positions, but we’re especially looking for planners and engineers!
It doesn’t matter what engine you have experience with, if you are interested in developing a new game then please apply!!
@Palworld_JP via X
Palworld has already published its first roadmap for early access. However, exact release times for the updates have not yet been given.
The Japanese studio Pocket Pair still has a lot to do with their survival game. An initial roadmap already promises the elimination of critical bugs, important optimizations such as the AI’s pathfinding or key assignments, and new features such as PvP, new islands, pals and bosses and of course endgame content.
It still remains to be seen whether the developers will be able to keep the current player base constant over the coming months. Of course, we accompany the development of Palworld for you.
If you want to read more about the future of Palworld, the dark sides of development or the controversial Pokémon mod, we recommend the articles linked above.
What about with you? Do you still play the unusual survival game? Or have you already put it aside like 1.3 million other players?
