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Palworld has the highest concurrent player count of any paid game in the history of Steam

Fredrik

Member
Wow, that sounds like they actually believe what they are saying. Just goes to show how internally facing the games industry is and it gives us a brief peek behind the curtain about how the really think.

Eurogamer are looking at Palworld and seeing it purely from an industry point of view, a blatant cheap rip-off to cash in off someone else's hard work and thinking that it's us the consumers who are the victim and being exploited. Well Eurogamer, the average consumer doesn't see it like that AT ALL. We see a fun game that totally respects it's audience by giving the freedom to tailor the experience to whatever they want it to be, we see a one-off purchase that offers great value for money and puts together a package of all the best bits from our favourite games without trying to tell us what it thinks is best for us. If anything it's the games industry that is the victim and i don't mean the indie devs or the low paid undervalued staff crunching at big development houses, its the multi-billion dollar corporations who are being exploited. The whole reason that Palworld is able to flourish is directly because of the actions of the big developers and publishers who have been going down a road for a long time that has looked to milk as much money from their userbase as possible, steadily introducing predatory tactics and mechanics time after time and in doing so has eventually sucking the fun out of the end product. It has put the bean counters first and lost sight of exactly what they originally set out to do. I am sure that I am not wrong by assuming that the first question being asked during early development meetings is "what can we take away to get the customers to spend more whilst keeping it just fun enough to retain them?" rather than simply "what else can we add to make it more fun to play?"

I say (gotta) fuck 'em all, if Pokemon company had actually been working all these years to deliver the best most fun product they could for their customers then there would have been no room for a rip off that is way better quality than the material it's copying. These big companies come out saying shit like "we don't think doing that would be right for our customers" when in reality what they are thinking is "we won't make enough money by doing that". They are not our friends, they see us a resource to be exploited as much as possible and it has become so engrained in them that they can't even see it anymore. This Tweet by Eurogamer proves that. Why should we as consumers give a damn if it takes money away from a massive company that has been doing that to us for decades especially when what we are getting is way way better in every way than the real thing.
Yeah so far this is the little guy pulling all the right strings from content, gameplay, choices, early access release, lower price, platform choice, PR, social media talk.

The rest of the industry simply needs to step up their game if it’s this easy for a 40-man indie dev to show how you’re supposed to make a living as a game developer. Maybe easy is the wrong word here, I’m sure they’ve worked their ass off to make this game, and they still do with updates and eventually releasing a complete version.

I think the industry can learn a lot from this tbh.
 
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Fredrik

Member
UlaGeeZ.jpeg

🤯
 

Porticus

Member
Yeah so far this is the little guy pulling all the right strings from content, gameplay, choices, early access release, lower price, platform choice, PR, social media talk.

The rest of the industry simply needs to step up their game if it’s this easy for a 40-man indie dev to show how you’re supposed to make a living as a game developer. Maybe easy is the wrong word here, I’m sure they’ve worked their ass off to make this game, and they still do with updates and eventually releasing a complete version.

I think the industry can learn a lot from this tbh.

Ahah dude the industry doesn't need to step up at all, last year was amazing in terms of output even without Palworld being released.
And no, this game doesn't make the industry any better actually worse I would say.
 

Fredrik

Member
The graph is going up like a sinus curve over the days, can it be determined where the biggest bulk of players are located?
It’s ~15:00 in central europe. Kids are coming home from school but grownups are commonly still working. Likely not the most ideal time for gaming unless it’s kids jumping on it before doing homework.
 

Fredrik

Member
Ahah dude the industry doesn't need to step up at all, last year was amazing in terms of output even without Palworld being released.
And no, this game doesn't make the industry any better actually worse I would say.
I don’t see how you can say this when so many people are losing their job working in the industry and when this relatively ”cheap” game are breaking player records while people playing it are loving it.
 
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CeeJay

Member
Yeah so far this is the little guy pulling all the right strings from content, gameplay, choices, early access release, lower price, platform choice, PR, social media talk.

The rest of the industry simply needs to step up their game if it’s this easy for a 40-man indie dev to show how you’re supposed to make a living as a game developer. Maybe easy is the wrong word here, I’m sure they’ve worked their ass off to make this game, and they still do with updates and eventually releasing a complete version.

I think the industry can learn a lot from this tbh.
Agree 100%. I do wonder how much these big publishers waste money on trying to extract more revenue, focus groups, diversity management, player engagement analysis and a variety of other such stupid things that don't actually have any value for the end customer. As you say, a 40 man team (of fairly inexperienced developers by the sounds of it) created Palworld in just 3 years!

Using some rudimentary maths i've worked out that each developer in the team has generated over $1.5 million in revenue per year for their boss so far!

7,000,000 (estimated sales) * $26.99 (current price on steam) / 40 (people on the team) / 3 (number of years in development).
 

thief183

Member
Have you played it?
What's the lesson exactly? Make survival games and copy pokemon?
Have you played it? It is a really good game, and we should all be happy for a good game to be so popular, also, maybe Nintendo will wake up and make a real poker pokemon game and not the recent bs. Palworld have so many thongs going on that reminded me good old times when discovering things in a game was amazing. And it is still in early access (even though it kinda looks almost finished to me)
 
Have you played it?

Have you played it? It is a really good game, and we should all be happy for a good game to be so popular, also, maybe Nintendo will wake up and make a real poker pokemon game and not the recent bs. Palworld have so many thongs going on that reminded me good old times when discovering things in a game was amazing. And it is still in early access (even though it kinda looks almost finished to me)

Doesn't really matter if i've played it. That wasn't the point
 

Porticus

Member
Agree 100%. I do wonder how much these big publishers waste money on trying to extract more revenue, focus groups, diversity management, player engagement analysis and a variety of other such stupid things that don't actually have any value for the end customer. As you say, a 40 man team (of fairly inexperienced developers by the sounds of it) created Palworld in just 3 years!

Using some rudimentary maths i've worked out that each developer in the team has generated over $1.5 million in revenue per year for their boss so far!

7,000,000 (estimated sales) * $26.99 (current price on steam) / 40 (people on the team) / 3 (number of years in development).

Palworld is not the norm, is the exception and not something a company should strive for.
No lesson to learn about it, no content, gameplay, choices, early access release, lower price, platform choice, PR, social media talk and all kind of BS.
 
They made enough for the development costs.
Actually it is interesting how they are going to sustain the momentum - for now it is very strong. Considering that it is an early access, will be interesting how it will develop.

The potential is huge with good investment - they can aim an plushes, anime, mobile port and potentially ability to gacha pokemons and so on.

Are you kidding right?
Well, it did take 7m or something to make. They also have something 40 developers I think?
 

Holammer

Member
Wow, that sounds like they actually believe what they are saying. Just goes to show how internally facing the games industry is and it gives us a brief peek behind the curtain about how the really think.

Eurogamer are looking at Palworld and seeing it purely from an industry point of view, a blatant cheap rip-off to cash in off someone else's hard work and thinking that it's us the consumers who are the victim and being exploited. Well Eurogamer, the average consumer doesn't see it like that AT ALL. We see a fun game that totally respects it's audience by giving the freedom to tailor the experience to whatever they want it to be, we see a one-off purchase that offers great value for money and puts together a package of all the best bits from our favourite games without trying to tell us what it thinks is best for us. If anything it's the games industry that is the victim and i don't mean the indie devs or the low paid undervalued staff crunching at big development houses, its the multi-billion dollar corporations who are being exploited. The whole reason that Palworld is able to flourish is directly because of the actions of the big developers and publishers who have been going down a road for a long time that has looked to milk as much money from their userbase as possible, steadily introducing predatory tactics and mechanics time after time and in doing so has eventually sucking the fun out of the end product. It has put the bean counters first and lost sight of exactly what they originally set out to do. I am sure that I am not wrong by assuming that the first question being asked during early development meetings is "what can we take away to get the customers to spend more whilst keeping it just fun enough to retain them?" rather than simply "what else can we add to make it more fun to play?"

I say (gotta) fuck 'em all, if Pokemon company had actually been working all these years to deliver the best most fun product they could for their customers then there would have been no room for a rip off that is way better quality than the material it's copying. These big companies come out saying shit like "we don't think doing that would be right for our customers" when in reality what they are thinking is "we won't make enough money by doing that". They are not our friends, they see us a resource to be exploited as much as possible and it has become so engrained in them that they can't even see it anymore. This Tweet by Eurogamer proves that. Why should we as consumers give a damn if it takes money away from a massive company that has been doing that to us for decades especially when what we are getting is way way better in every way than the real thing.
I get the impression the marching orders are out now.
Most industry folks I follow on Twitter are silent on the topic, avoid it or declare they are muting 'Palworld'. A deafening silence for a game selling on this scale.

I saw some early positive first impressions, but they were shouted down with accusations of Palworld being a Chinese bootleg, AI, plagiarism etc.
 

CeeJay

Member
Palworld is not the norm, is the exception and not something a company should strive for.
No lesson to learn about it, no content, gameplay, choices, early access release, lower price, platform choice, PR, social media talk and all kind of BS.
Sounds like you got your fingers in your ears shouting lalalala i'm not listening.

Palworld is the second highest all time concurrent users on steam yet there is absolutely nothing to learn from it. OK.

Whether you like it or not it is clearly doing something right and you can fob it off all you like but just try to comprehend what "second highest all time concurrent users on steam" actually means. I know you will fob it off saying its just down to TikTok or its just weebs or its just for the memes or its just for whatever other pigeon hole you want to put all those millions of people into maybe, just maybe consider that it might be you that needs to reconsider your position on it?
 

Porticus

Member
Palworld is a literal and blatant copycat of different games, like the other games made by the same company.
No lesson to learn about it because for me is not something an healthy industry should strive for, simple as that.
No low price, no platform choice and no other BS and the like, is a literal exception and one of those thing that are impossible to replicate.
 

Porticus

Member
Sounds like you got your fingers in your ears shouting lalalala i'm not listening.

Palworld is the second highest all time concurrent users on steam yet there is absolutely nothing to learn from it. OK.

Whether you like it or not it is clearly doing something right and you can fob it off all you like but just try to comprehend what "second highest all time concurrent users on steam" actually means. I know you will fob it off saying its just down to TikTok or its just weebs or its just for the memes or its just for whatever other pigeon hole you want to put all those millions of people into maybe, just maybe consider that it might be you that needs to reconsider your position on it?

And make no mistake, I'm playing and enjoying the game and I will buy their new games as well, but I don't want this to be the norm.
 

RickMasters

Member
Not really my style of game. But man this game just came out of nowhere and made a splash.


I can see why it’s gonna become a big deal though, especially among younger gamers.
 

BlackTron

Member


Sure many Pokemon were "inspired" by DQ monsters but this takes it to the next level of also taking Pokemon's art style, design language, proportions etc. It actually looks like a Dragon Quest and a Pokemon version -you wouldn't mistake the two:
It looks like a Nintendo game to me

In Palworld it just looks and feels like straight Pokemon, creating the kind of brand crossover confusion they try to demonstrate in court. The difference between what crosses the line is subjective, and can be subtle. When Apple sued Samsung:

"Apple's evidence submitted to the court included side-by-side image comparisons of iPhone 3GS and i9000 Galaxy S to illustrate the alleged similarities in packaging and icons for apps. However, the images were later found to have been tampered with in order to make the dimensions and features of the two different products seem more similar, and counsel for Samsung accused Apple of submitting misleading evidence to the court."

The difference is subtle enough that Apple decided to tweak it to help substantiate that Samsung went too far. Apple also lost in some countries, won in others, only for appeals, basically a big rollercoaster over the question of whether Samsung was infringing on Apple or not. It's not like there's a defined standard for everything that's just yes or no.

edit: My point is that there's a more interesting conversation to be had about whether Nintendo has a case or what their tactics will be, if any, than simply handwaving away that you can't patent making dumb collectible monsters or its clear because they "did the same to DQ". Maybe you can't own making a purple bat character, but you can own the look, feel, style and design language of it in that business. Who knows where the exact line would fall in court. Depending even on the judge and all the attorneys. Could be different every time.
 
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Xion_Stellar

People should stop referencing data that makes me feel uncomfortable because games get ported to platforms I don't like
My point is that there's a more interesting conversation to be had about whether Nintendo has a case or what their tactics will be, if any, than simply handwaving away that you can't patent making dumb collectible monsters or its clear because they "did the same to DQ". Maybe you can't own making a purple bat character, but you can own the look, feel, style and design language of it in that business. Who knows where the exact line would fall in court. Depending even on the judge and all the attorneys. Could be different every time.
I don't understand what's so interesting about this? At the end of the day why should we the consumers care if TPCi has a case or not? If TPCi thinks they have a case they will sue if they don't then they won't. Were not their lawyers, we don't own any of their stock and were not part of their board of directors so outside of meaningless fanboyism we as the consumers don't gain anything in this scenario.
 

GHG

Member


Just when you don't think the embarrassing discourse surrounding Palworld can't get any worse.
People are having a field day putting them down, so it's all good.

RNrvpWb.jpg


So what have I done for 20 hours of my time with the game then?

I was clearly being sold, not playing the game.

Clowns, it's one of the better open world structures out there. After the tutorial the game just let's you go off and explore freely with no map markers. It's fantastic.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
The lesson is nobody knows what will be the next big thing so err take risks???
That's not really accurate though is it? There are certain genres where a Palworld can't happen in (fighters, JRPGs, racing games) and there are genres where it can (survival games, Battle Royale, 4p co-op).

Some bets are far better than others.
 
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Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
This is going to get ugly very soon .
 
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simpatico

Member
The year is 2036.

The new Palbox’s dropped today. People on NeoGAF are arguing if the Sony Palbox is better than the Microsoft Palbox. They’re both solid state PalWorld boxes that cannot play other games. Outside of darknet indie titles; there are no other games.

EA, UbiSoft, Nintendo, Naughty Dog, CD Projekt RED all make paid Palworld mods for a living.

PalPass surpasses Netflix in subscriptions

Nvidia PalCards dominate the shelves at MicroCenter. AMD still cannot compete.
 
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