Palworld dev begs fans not to argue about player counts as the survival game gets a boost from the Sakurajima update: "Palworld had 2mil, then it had 15k, now it has 140k"

Palworld is enjoying a substantial boost to its player numbers thanks to the launch of its first major update, but its community manager is asking players not to worry about defending it from criticism over an overall drop in players from its huge peak earlier this year.

After Palworld launched into early access in January, it surged to more than 2 million concurrents - enough to establish it as the second most-played game by concurrents in the platform's history. Those numbers were pretty clearly unsustainable for an early access survival game, and Palworld quickly slipped to its new normal - a still-respectable daily peak of around 25-30,000 players.

With the release of its Sakurajima update on June 27, however, that figure has picked back up a bit. While it's still well short of its record, those daily peaks are now comfortably into the six figures, with a monthly peak of 143,308 players. But even amid all those ups and downs, one Palworld developer is asking the game's ardent fans not to get involved in arguments over player counts.

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Community manager Bucky took to Twitter to ask Palworld players to "please stop getting baited into player number arguments" on social media. "It's really sweet you want to stand up for Palworld but it's super not worth your time. Those posts are pure engagement bait."

Bucky goes onto say that the number of players that Palworld has "doesn't matter [...] it's not something to get angry about. In a few weeks it'll go down again, and next major update it'll go up. That's just how it works. Palworld could have literally one person playing it and that won’t take away from the fact that YOU played a fun game and have fun memories of it."

Aside from that last sentiment, Palworld's enduring success is another reason why its player count doesn't really matter. As well as cementing a second-place spot on Steam that's unlikely to be bested for some time, it's vastly surpassed its developers expectations, with 15 million Steam players likely generating enough revenue for developer Pocketpair that it won't be worrying about cashflow for quite some time.

Palworld earns its spot on our list of the best survival games.