"Not bad for a dead game": Palworld dev fires back at the haters as Pocketpair celebrates its Steam Best of 2025 rankings, says "we're still humbled by our community's endless support"

Despite being released in early access all the way back in January 2024, Palworld remains in the top 100 of four of Steam's Best of 2025 categories. Steam released top 100 lists of the best selling or most played games in seven different categories, and Palworld still ranks highly almost two years post launch.

Steam doesn't reveal games' exact position on the Best of 2025 lists, but Palworld appeared in the top 50 most played games on PC and most played games on Steam Deck in 2025. It was also in the top 100 best selling games, and most played games with a controller.

Two years after it originally launched in early access, Palworld has just 3% of the concurrent players that it held at launch. However, as it boasts an all-time peak of 2.1 million players, this still equals a healthy count of around 50 to 70k players per day.

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In response to a tweet from the official Palworld account sharing the achievements and that there will be "news soon" regarding the Palworld 1.0 release, communications director and Palworld designer John 'Bucky' Buckley hit back at those who see the reduced player count as a sign that the game is "dead."

"Two years later and we're still humbled by our community's endless support and kindness," Bucky tweets. After saying thank you to the Palworld players, he signs off the message with a cheeky "not bad for a dead game!!"

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