After its hype in January, we are now at the end of February and many players have left Palworld. Palworld gained virality when people started to compare it to the popular game franchise, Pokemon. While this game is relatively different, mods were made that allowed Pokemon characters to be within the game which led to Nintendo potentially suing.

At its peak, Palworld had over 2.1 million players. The game is now sitting roughly at 400,000 players and declining according to SteamDB. Just last week it was sitting at 700,000 players. This massive decrease has led to a developer to make a statement. This developer, Bucky, criticizes this debate on losing players. They don’t think that people should be debating about this because they didn’t even think that they would be as successful as it became. They thought their game would only reach around 50,000 players. They reiterate the fact that it is OK to take a step back from games and play something else.

With Palworld quickly approaching the 1-month mark, it’s interesting to look back at my own thoughts for launch.

In May of 2023, I was convinced that Palworld could break the 50,000 player mark. Anything above that seemed unobtainable though, and I certainly never expected it to… pic.twitter.com/1rZaV30QON

— Bucky | Palworld & Craftopia (@Bucky_cm) February 14, 2024

Cheating and Fraudulent activity have also contributed to the decline of people playing. In a statement, Palworld developers stated that “Currently, some users are unable to connect to official servers due to cheating and the influence of fraudulent activities. We have confirmed that some players are unable to play the game properly.” This has caused the developers to implement an “external anti-cheating solution” and add a player list option to servers. This will help players be able to report cheaters and remove more cheaters than the team is currently able to do. While the developers are able to take on many cases daily, they are still not able to keep up.

Games enter and leave popularity more and more because of social media and streamers. Palworld is one of those games. While people will continue playing or return to the game, it is unlikely that the game will reach the massive success it once had in January.