Palworld is still an unquestionably popular game, sitting around 100,000 concurrent players according to data tracker SteamDB. The core gameplay loop – catching ‘Pals’, combat, and crafting in an open world – remains reasonably enjoyable, if still a rough Early Access display of the game’s future, final evolution. 

But its public favour is waning. 

Palworld took the world by storm to start 2024, capturing the digital zeitgeist to the tune of a record 2.1 million concurrent players at its peak in late January. 

The game’s popularity was explosive, generated by its unabashed satire of Pokemon and Nintendo’s legacy, sparking speculation of a legal showdown between developer Pocket Pair and the gaming goliath, which has yet to materialize. Combined with bright, spunky visuals, humorous viral clips of players capturing humans as Pals and serious questions about the developer’s use of artificial intelligence for its art, Palworld seemed destined for a position as a new survival game juggernaut. 

So why did the game hemorrhage more than 36% of its player base every month since its release? 

Simply put: gimmick games don’t last. Palworld’s just not that innovative while existing in a saturated multiplayer games environment. 

On paper, combining Pokemon’s signature ‘catch and battle’ system with the survival genre’s ‘craft and build’ system and elements of a third-person shooter seems like a recipe for success.

But Palworld’s implementation seems to focus more on gimmicks – like firing Pals from rocket launchers, the uncomfortably alluring ‘Lovander’ Pal (the game’s 69th database entry) or the aforementioned human ‘Pals’ – rather than smooth and enjoyable player-focused gameplay or anything even remotely resembling a true campaign or story. 

After the initial interest wears off, Palworld is exposed, displaying that it just doesn’t do any of these things well and players can find far more polished, enjoyable experiences in other titles. 

Paired with rampant bugs, hackers destroying and stealing the hard work of players or sometimes crashing servers entirely, it’s unsurprising to see Palworld’s player base making for the exits. 

By contrast, Helldivers 2 (albeit a far different genre) has taken a similar trajectory of capturing lightning in a bottle while remaining at a steady ~500,000 concurrent players after one month, the same timeframe in which Palworld’s player base had already cratered. 

Helldivers’ developers took a far more conservative approach, keeping the gameplay loop tight, with a smaller suite of mechanics – basically a core extraction shooter experience – that tie into a global metagame and narrative as administered by Arrowhead Studios and ‘Joel’. 

The result is an engaging and highly polished experience that’s kept players interested for weeks and generated its own internet ecosystem in a spectacularly short period of time, despite some early missteps by Arrowhead’s community team. 

The difference in design philosophy is clear: a focus on player-first experiences while releasing a high quality and polished title with long-term staying power. The Swedish studio used time-tested games as inspiration while innovating with tools like the ‘Galactic War’ meta-game which most recently unlocked playable mech suits for the entire game community. 

Palworld is admittedly still an Early Access title – although other Early Access games like Enshrouded and Valheim have maintained more stable populations – giving Pocket Pair an opportunity to switch tracks and hone the edge on the core ideas that could make Palworld a long-term success. 

Gamers are not blind nor dumb, and studios making that assumption do so at their peril. In an era of a seemingly endless number of live service games, players are capable of seeing through gimmicks that mask shaky gameplay or masquerade as content precisely because there are so many quality experiences available to them. 

Studios and developers who keep players at the centre, focused on the solid foundations of an entertaining experience while maintaining what can only be described as creative integrity – an honest interpretation of how players want to spend their increasingly spread time and money – will remain successful with the robust, sustained populations needed to keep live service games alive. 

Forgoing these values may still result in games rocketing to early success like Palworld’s (or, more dramatically, a failure to launch like Skull & Bones), but will likely see players and their valuable dollars turn to other titles for enjoyment over time – and in turn, send these gimmicky games to an early grave.