Palworld has broken Counter-Strike's all-time concurrent players peak at 1.8 million, and is now #2 most played game on Steam ever. It is only behind PUBG which holds the record at 3.2 million.
It's actually pretty good. there's a little jank but a lot of heart. I was surprised to see that Every pal had battle, working, eating, and petting animations.
and this doesn't even include any of the GamePass players, right?
The game wouldn't run for me on GamePass, crashes every 15 seconds... so I guess I'll on Steam.
I have a minor conspiracy theory about the Game Pass launch: it almost seems like they made the game pass version intentionally worse/buggier. Still had fun gameplay but lacking features that a lot of people want, some odd oversights (e.g. no menu to quit the game in the PC game pass build, have to alt+F4) and more stability issues. That gives people a chance to try it, find out they like the game, learn it's better on steam, and then buy it there.
That's exactly what happened with my entire friend group (we also wanted a Private server for more people and persistent world regardless of who is online, which GP version can't do currently).
Rationally, I recognize that it's probably a matter of the build being different, limitations when running in the Microsoft ecosystem (though other games are about to connect to private servers, even if it's less straightforward) and the GP version is primarily for console (runs on PC as well, but the menu screens feel like console ones). But it certainly didn't hurt their sales that the Steam version was clearly better.
I wonder if it runs good on the steam deck
30fps on lows from what I remember seeing others post. Allegedly there is a mod to help performance on Deck, too
Friend of mine joined my server from his steam deck, and was using the deck dock to a 52" TV, said it was running beautifully.
I've been playing it for a while now, quite fun. It reminded me of tech modpacks that incorporated Pixelmon in Minecraft, although this is much more refined. It has much less of a Pokemon vibe as people give it credit for. Other than mounts, you have no control of what abilities your pal uses, and it is much less focused on rock-paper-scissors and more on the terrain and damage delivery because of its real-time FPS nature.
I honestly don't understand how people saw this slop and all just threw their wallets at it. The only way I can cope with this beating fucking Counter Strike is that it's "Adult Pokemon" premise was too interesting to pass up. I can't imagine it'll be like this in a month or several. As an outsider this is beyond bizarre to watch. Maybe PETA got to me but it turns my stomach watching people gleefully butcher and enslave Pokemon.
Yep! Clearly I'm in the minority thinking it's distasteful to take innocent, bright, goofy looking creatures that resemble the childhood characters most of us grew up with and literally fucking slaughtering them with a butcher knife for soup. I'd rather shoot unnamed terrorist #32 in his terrorizing face. Correct.
If the game wasn't also low effort slop that's borderline an asset flip with how many designs they've stolen, I'd probably tolerate it more but I'm awestruck so many people are eating this trash up and celebrating it.
The uniformed virtue signaling is strong with this one...
All of the "butchering" is optional. Believe me, the game makes it much easier to set up a berry patch that auto-feeds everything in your base, rather than manually butchering everything.
And... Normal Pokemon is enslaving as well. You're literally catching them and forcing them to fight each other to the brink of death. Just to recycle the rhetoric of the crazies 20-25 years ago. It's akin to dog fighting. You're also a child in Pokemon..
Come on, at least try to make a good argument.
Maybe PETA got to me but it turns my stomach watching people gleefully butcher and enslave Pokemon.
So you gleefully play terrorism stimulator the game?
I'm anti-war and anti-guns, I play a lot of war games and shooters. It's a game.
You really don't see how "killing bad guys doing bad things" is a lot easier to stomach than walking up to a Miltank eating grass and blowing it's head off with a shotgun?
There's a way you do violence with cute characters and it's fucking called Pokemon. It's called Slime Rancher. I don't know who the fuck asked for Happy Tree Friends: The Game but congrats, you got it.
Do people riding horses gross you out too, or relying on dogs to find injured people in accidents? Animals have had jobs with people throughout history.
Do you not fight wolves, attack dogs, dragons, and other animals on any other game you've played?
You don't have to butcher your pals. There is no in game need for it. You have pals, you pet them and feed them and provide for their needs and they help you cut a tree down. Sometimes they don't feel like it and they just don't do it. What's the problem?
No, you have to butcher pals. It's the game
Yeah imagine still playing counterstrike on the same 3 maps and guns for 20 years and spend 1000 dollars on a cool knife.
I've never eaten meat in my life and still feel bad about accidentally sucking a little spider into the vacuum a few weeks ago but I much prefer it to Pokémon because it's saying 'oh this cute little sheep? You can kill it and it's horrible and cruel but it's ok because it's a game' where as Pokémon says 'oh this adorable little guy? Yeah beat him up, capture him and force him to fight for you entertainment, it's super cool and cute and fun just like in real life!'
(Note the only Pokémon game I played was on a Gameboy emulator in the 90s, I've also not played this but it does look more fun than Pokémon)
See I can disconnect from the animals in real life because we don't have a lot of alternatives to meat just yet. I'm not vegan, I eat chicken and burgers nearly daily, but if plant meat tastes the same and costs the same I do think it starts to become our responsibility to transition into that. The meat industry is a necessary cruelty for the moment. What fucks me up is people looking at characters designed to be cute, lovable companions and going "What if I could shoot it though? Capture it and cut it up?" like that's where I start getting a bit sick to my stomach. But people are eating it up so obviously I'm the weird one for not being into that.
The Pokemon 'fighting' never bothered me because there's never any deaths so in my head they're just friendly sparring. Childish veneer to an otherwise pretty messed up concept. Palworld shatters that veneer and I'm surprised more people aren't repulsed by it.
I hope Game Freak sees this as a wake up call. People will kill for a Pokemon game with a little innovation.
Why would they? It takes effort to make something innovative. They can make buckets of money by doing nothing. They might make more, but it's going to cost a lot more too.
This game literally cost 6 million though, that's nothing to the Pokemon company.
Pokemon Arceus had a little innovation. The thing is: a little innovation after decades of doing the same thing is like a textbook example of "too little, too late".
Also Pokémon Arceus was still empty and boring
I don't think that GameFreak will see this as a wake up call. And even if it does, it might not do the necessary changes to Pokémon main series.
The stagnation runs deeper. It is partially caused by inertia ("we're selling well, why bother innovating?"), but also by GF's insistence on making the main series story-driven instead of gameplay-driven. Even if story-driven Pokémon goes a lot against the franchise's biggest strength - a wide, unique, and immersive universe to explore.
Except Palworld is insanely popular with essentially no story...
More importantly: The Pokemon Company is a separate entity from Game Freak and Nintendo, with a third company also participating, Creatures Inc.
Pokemon games exist solely to drive people, especially the current younger generation, into the franchise. Licensed merchandise is THE money printer for them. In 2022, they reported 11.6 billion dollars in revenue just from that. They're at a point where they can literally ask "Why even bother with games?"
Yeah really goes to show just how massive this market is, and how horribly game freak has whiffed here
They're probably finding out all the ways to sue PalWorld in.
or just one available on pc
People will kill for a pokemon game that doesn't release broken as hell from bugs. Crazy idea I know
People will kill for a Pokemon game. Any Pokemon game. And gamefreak knows that
People like cathing cool animals and do thing with them valling it a pokemon like game is just weird. No one called pokemon final fantasy with animals.
Yeah it's obviously like Pokémon in several key regards but from what I've seen of it the actual game has a lot of originality and new concepts. We shouldn't need to completely reinvent everything all the time, when something has a big cultural impact on people as children they should be allowed to play with and evolve those concepts - I know Pokémon doesn't understand how evolution works but we as a society should take our cultural property seriously.
If you shove your ideas into kids brains then the adults who grow from those kids should own those ideas, the only reason we don't is because Disney wanted a monopoly on mouse picture.
Set copyright to something reasonable like twenty years and focus on making a better society with free growth of ideas and expression rather than protecting the profits of the richest few
Do you feel cool bashing an indie dev’s efforts?
With the chosen name of "sheeple" I'm guessing you get upset at just about anything a majority of people enjoy.