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[bender]

It always felt like a soup du jour. Even with the decline, those are impressive numbers. It will be interesting to see where it sits six months from now.

 

[Fafalada]

This matters less because it was P2P. If this was F2P it would be an issue.

I know you meant revenue wise - but entry fee is only that - service games are after those 7-10 years revenues not the first 2 weeks. Moreover - when F2P hits 2M CCU - it's operationally massively profitable and then some - the breakeven point for operational profits is actually surprisingly low unless you had monkeys design the service.

And in a way it matters more - P2P usually gets better retention by default just because people paid to get in (ie. you've already invested before even launching the game). So being on a curve like that is rarely a good sign - but the flipside is it's only 2 weeks of data, so it's really early to tell.

 

[Senua]

Palworld has gained and lost a million players in the time frame of a week, that's over 50% of their big surge they had.

MS would be dumb to purchase it or the studio. It was a tiktok social media fad, you would be smarter buying someone like pubg Corp or one of those studios if all you want is Asian made game with lots of players.

Palworld will be dead within a month most likely

People said the same about PUBG, we'll see.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I know you meant revenue wise - but entry fee is only that - service games are after those 7-10 years revenues not the first 2 weeks. Moreover - when F2P hits 2M CCU - it's operationally massively profitable and then some - the breakeven point for operational profits is actually surprisingly low unless you had monkeys design the service.

And in a way it matters more - P2P usually gets better retention by default just because people paid to get in (ie. you've already invested before even launching the game). So being on a curve like that is rarely a good sign - but the flipside is it's only 2 weeks of data, so it's really early to tell.

I think these developers have a pretty good idea of what their player retention rates will be and if they don't have confidence in them, the play is to charge up front. If Palworld was F2P it likely wouldn't have made near the amount of money that it did.

Their next goal is to go away for the next 3, 6, or 12 months and build a big content splash to get people to come back. A No Mans Sky type model.

 

[hangdang69]

I'm getting sort of tired of seeing threads like this every time a game's player count drops. This is what happens with 99% of multiplayer games, especially ones that go "viral" or get a following soon after launch. The numbers almost always balloon, and without fail, after a month or two, the player count falls off a cliff.

Not many games have the staying power of something like CS or the big hitters. It's the natural progression of player count in today's gaming landscape and doesn't seem worth a thread with every meme game of the month

 

[Fafalada]

I think these developers have a pretty good idea of what their player retention rates will be and if they don't have confidence in them, the play is to charge up front. If Palworld was F2P it likely wouldn't have made near the amount of money that it did.

I mean - in first 2 weeks - obviously, but again, service model isn't built around weeks, or even months - of revenue.
Regarding retention - presumably they could model against their previous games, but IME retention predictions are often a lot of shooting in the dark - especially when you get acquisition funnel that supposedly exceeded expectations multiple times over (like in this case). And going away for months on end is the fastest way to kill retention unless you have a really hardcore following.

But I guess if this really is resonating with pokemon fanbase - coming back for more every few years is built into the market I guess.

 

[Euler007]

Palworld has gained and lost a million players in the time frame of a week, that's over 50% of their big surge they had.

MS would be dumb to purchase it or the studio. It was a tiktok social media fad, you would be smarter buying someone like pubg Corp or one of those studios if all you want is Asian made game with lots of players.

Palworld will be dead within a month most likely

It's addictive and a lot of fun. More fun than I had in my Sun/Moon runs by a pretty big margin.

 

[Kikorin]

Same fate as its excellent predecessors:

 

[ahtlas7]

Palworld has made an entrance into the gaming zeitgeist. Those praying for its failure can give it up, it’s too late. Prepare to see the merchandise next.

 

[Lupin25]

The thing is, the amount of playtime it takes to max out your level, most people clear that in two weeks with other live-service games.

Pocketpair being a smaller dev, Palworld will probably fluctuate as new content is drip fed to players. Still a massive success.

 

[BlackTron]

It's addictive and a lot of fun. More fun than I had in my Sun/Moon runs by a pretty big margin.

I wasn't sold that the game has legs until I played it. It's obvious why it pulls people in and it's not going away.

 

[C2brixx]

It always felt like a soup du jour. Even with the decline, those are impressive numbers. It will be interesting to see where it sits six months from now.

Probably on PS5 and we'll stop seeing threads downplaying the games success.

 

[Arsic]

 

[Danjin44]

They could have been more creative and come up with their own creature designs.....

I'm someone who is not in to Pokemon games because I was never fan of Pokemon designs even from very beginning and with Palworld is same Pokémon designs that I already dont like but now even more ugly and with guns and survival gameplay crap.

 

[Exentryk]

Numbers dropping are expected. You can reach max level and 'finish' the game in a few weeks.

Getting 50-60 hours of gameplay from $30 is pretty amazing. And the game will only add more content from here.

Great success.

 

[mckmas8808]

700 thousand daily players, yeah it's a failure!

Seriously. Some on this board are delusional.

 

[Chastten]

I just 'finished' it last night, meaning captured all the legendaries and beat the final tower boss. I could continue playing to max out my base effiency and breed the best Pal available but those would take dozens of hours of mindnumbing grinding so that's not for me. Instead, I'll drop it for now and I'll wait for a new content update.

I'm gonna assume a lot of people are like me and dropped it for now until they feel like playing again. It was never gonna keep the insane numbers it had 2 weeks ago, which was fuelled by massive amounts of social media FOMO, but I also don't believe this game is gonna die any time soon. It has too much potential for that.

 

[KAOS]

This will never happen to Helldivers 2!

 

[Physiognomonics]

Absolutely shocked this turned out to be a flash of hype that would soon die down. Very shocked.

It's not?

 

[Little Chicken]

The first big update will see numbers surge again.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Helldivers 2 lost half its player base and fell off the top ten.

Quick! Make a thread!

 

[Varteras]

 

[StueyDuck]

Same fate as its excellent predecessors:

pretty much, but with wildly greater numbers attached and loss at a far shorter length of time as well.

 

[RoadHazard]

It's not?

You think this will still be a huge game a year from now? I don't. But we'll see.

 

[SRTtoZ]

Makes sense as it’s not a repayable game. Once you’re done with it you’re done.

 

[Physiognomonics]

You think this will still be a huge game a year from now? I don't. But we'll see.

I think it should do pretty well once on Playstation platforms.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

Small team, Don't expect Fortnite levels of content.

 

[ozz ex machina]

I just wanted to reply to your message for posterity xD

Remember it is still in early access...

This is such a non argument for games like this mate.

These games do not grow in popularity. https://steamcharts.com/app/892970#All

I'm sure valheim is way better now than it was when it came out. But it's a time and a place thing. These games don't grow in popularity. I don't know too much about palworld but I cannot fathom it ever getting back to those peak player numbers. That by no means doesn't mean it doesn't keep selling or have a healthy playerbase. But I guarantee you it will never get close to the peak again.

 

[hinch7]

FOTM gamesusually fall off after a few weeks. Twitch streamers get bored and either go back to their regular games, or something new. And people follow.

This being a early access game probably is another big factor.

 

[Yonyx]

This is such a non argument for games like this mate.

These games do not grow in popularity. https://steamcharts.com/app/892970#All

I'm sure valheim is way better now than it was when it came out. But it's a time and a place thing. These games don't grow in popularity. I don't know too much about palworld but I cannot fathom it ever getting back to those peak player numbers. That by no means doesn't mean it doesn't keep selling or have a healthy playerbase. But I guarantee you it will never get close to the peak again.

I don't think it will reach the highest numbers, of course not. I think it's going to continue to have very good numbers above 50.000 players for several months while it's in early access.

The message I replied to was talking about 12k players very soon...

 

[Ronin_7]

It's early access, will probably explode again once reaches full release.

At least BG3 exploded after EA.

 

[Gideon]

It's not even 1.0.

 

[Jose92]

The gameplay was pretty shit to say the least, as if I am playing a game made in dream. The feeling, the camera lock, the spongy enemies. It felt amateur in a lot of aspects. None the less, it was fun for couple of hours.

 

[darrylgorn]

We need to be talking more about Counterstrike 2, holy fucking shit

 

[Majukun]

absolutely normal for a game to lose a huge percentage of players after a while

 

[Scotty W]

2 weeks, 2/3 player loss.

If this trend continues, it will lose the final 1/3 this week, leaving NO ONE.

 

[Spyxos]

My friends are lvl 50 and as far as i understand it they have done everything in this game. So why play more?

 

[gtabro]

That's because the 60 fps game is here

 

[hemo memo]

The only winning move is not to play.

I open HLTB and check as I can’t play anything above 20 hours anymore.

 

[The Infectious Paradox]

It's got great crafting and a really fun capture/battle system. But as a level 42 player I don't find much to get excited about the world or to work for at his point.

I know it's early access, but I hope they bring more interesting things to work for.

 

[ozz ex machina]

It's early access, will probably explode again once reaches full release.

At least BG3 exploded after EA.

It's not even 1.0.

No it won't. BG is a bad example because that's story content. It will NEVER explode again. There will be a slow and steady decline with the odd bump. Never getting close to its peak again.

None of that means this game isnt a resounding success. But I feel like posts like this come from people who have no understanding of how this genre/hype around these type of games operates.

 

[Jadsey]

More proof that people are trading in their Xboxs in industrial quantities!?

 

[Interfectum]

I don’t understand hype about this game, but saying that 700k people playing it now is somehow bad thing, it’s odd.

Not sure what's so odd about having this conversation... it wasn't odd when people were hyping up 2 million concurrent but now we can't talk about how it's already dropped to 600k peaks (and still going down). It's quite possible to understand the game is a massive finical success for the developers and discuss how the game is seemingly dropping like a rock in player count. Some were hyping this game up to be the next Fortnite or Roblox.

The game won the social media zeitgeist lottery in January there is no denying that.

 

[Stitch]

It's still on second place between Counter-strike 2 and DOTA. Yeah clearly a dead game.

Here have some Katress

 

[Interfectum]

It's still on second place between Counter-strike 2 and DOTA. Yeah clearly a dead game.

Here have some Katress

Nothing in the OP says it's a dead game though. Did you read it? Why does this game have such a bizarre defense force around it?

 

[BlackTron]

Nothing in the OP says it's a dead game though. Did you read it? Why does this game have such a bizarre defense force around it?

Nothing in the OP said it is a dead game, but its offense force came out in the comments.

 

[Fbh]

Lol some people are still desperate to see this game fail.
Most people buy the game, play the content that's there and then move on to something else. It's fine, not everything has to be an evergreen title like Fortnite. Not to mention this is still in early access, isn't content complete and is still insanely popular.

If the latest generic hyped up AAA game launched to 12+ million sales in a month, people then played it, finished it and moved on to something else I'd be considered a massive success

 

[Eotheod]

Early access game that was probably a first for many in that development phase, so they were probably shocked to realise it wasn't actually finished. Though, it is incredibly competent in its content offerings which is unusual for early access games.

No matter what though, it clearly has had a massive impact and they are in the same lane as No Man's Sky. That is, anytime an update/expansion is added it will bring people back in droves as the core gameplay loop is incredibly well done with the blending.

 

[azertydu91]

The only winning move is not to play.

I imagine it was reference to Wargames?

 

[billthomas696969]

So it's this year's Valheim, then. Feels like every year there's this spring early access game that everyone is convinced is the future of gaming for like two weeks... then completely forgets it exists immediately afterwards.

The headline, while true, is meaningless without context. How many players does the average game lose after two weeks?