John "Bucky" Buckley, community manager for Palworld developer Pocketpair, has waded into the "dead games" discourse once again. Speaking in an interview with the YouTube channel Going Indie, Buckley pushed back against the idea that the only measure of a game's success is how long it's able to maintain the highest possible player count. "I don't think it really serves anyone to push gamers to play the same game, day in and day out," Buckley said.
Buckley first spoke out against the impulse to declare a game dead back in February, when Palworld had started suffering the "dead game" moniker after its player count had dwindled from unsustainable millions to mere tens of thousands—a player base most games on Steam would be thrilled to entertain. Calling the discourse "lazy," Buckley said it was "a good time to step in and reassure those of you capable of reading past a headline that it is fine to take breaks from games."
