Palworld developer PocketPair addressed various comments on social media platforms that its open-world monster-taming title is a "dead game" and calls out unhealthy gaming routines.
One particular member of the team said that it was not healthy for people to play the same game all the time if it wasn't particularly designed with long-term gameplay in mind. Palworld community manager John Buckley responded to the "dead game" claims.
Palworld "Dead Game" Claims
The debate started after people noticed that Palworld had a daily peak concurrent player count of roughly 60,000, which is astronomically fewer than the 2 million shortly after its launch.
Buckley, who is also known as Bucky, said that Palworld was never designed to be played forever.
The community manager added that there was no actual point to players doing so, noting that if they do continue to play the same game, it could enforce a belief among developers and publishers.
This is that more live service games are the key, moving forward, according to the Video Games Chronicle.
Bucky said that people shouldn't push themselves to play the same game all the time because it's not healthy for players and developers alike. He said that it also had a bad effect on the industry itself.
He argued that pushing this kind of narrative makes larger companies believe that people just want live service games all the time. This would more or less result in a lot of soulless live service games that then get shut down about a year after launching.
Bucky, in response to the "dead game" talks, called the discourse "lazy," adding that this was a good time to step in. He said that he wanted to reassure people that it was actually fine for them to take breaks from gaming, said PCGamer.
Unhealthy Gaming Routines
The Palworld community manager also said that the PocketPair game was not in a position to just continuously release massive amounts of new content. He urged players not to apply that expectation to every other title that they play.
The term "dead game" hasn't only been used on Palworld in recent memory and in the past few years, many other titles have received that moniker.
These include Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Arrowhead Game Studios' Helldivers 2, Blizzard's Overwatch 2, and many others.
Another game, Concord, which was made by Sony and is another live service hero shooter, was called a "dead game" before it even launched. This is because of the low number of beta concurrents on Steam, according to IGN.
