“Palworld is now one of only seven games that have seen over 1 million concurrent players on Steam – the others include: PUBG (3.2 mil), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (1.8 mil), Counter-Strike 2 (1.4 mil), Lost Ark (1.3 mil), Dota 2 (1.2 mil), and Cyberpunk 2077 (1 mil).”
On the one hand it’s kind of disgusting, but it’s also heartening: this is a studio that had done nothing but asset flips. Their artists didn’t even know what a rig was. They were completely out of their depth.
And while the game is the most cynical thing I’ve ever seen, its creature designs are blatant mash-ups of Pokemon, and its media hype is absolutely bewildering and somewhat suspicious… but by all accounts it’s decently good fun and looks decent visually too.
So, a studio with no idea what they were doing managed to poop out a moderately good game and smash it out of the park in terms of success.
That should be heartening. That should say “maybe I can do it too” to all the hopeful indie devs out there. That should be a massive endorsement of the tooling that the industry has developed, that a completely unqualified group of guys can make a fun and successful online multiplayer action game.