One Palworld developer still can't wrap their head around just how big their monster-taming survival game became, having now reached 32 million players, and the only logical explanation for its success was that it luckily managed to get stuck in a "weirdly perfect storm."
Pocketpair's early access juggernaut broke all kind of records when it launched last year - it courted one of the highest concurrent user counts in Steam history, it became the biggest third-party Game Pass release of all time, and it was selling millions of copies in the blink of an eye. Now, 32 million people have picked it up.
It's the kind of lofty success that communication director and publishing manager John 'Bucky' Buckley calls "unexplainable," but of course, we asked him to try to explain it in an interview at the Game Developer's Conference 2025.
Simply making a good game and crossing your fingers for good luck is part of the strategy, Buckley said. "Obviously I'm very biased, but Palworld is a very fun game, and I think Palworld hits the formula of gameplay loops pretty much perfectly," he explained. "So yes, of course, I think we always knew Palworld was gonna be a success... And we knew from very early private testing that we had something. People were really into the early tests of Palworld. We knew it was going to be successful for what it was."
But just making a game good is obviously not enough to become one of the best-selling games of all time, otherwise we'd get a Palworld-sized hit every week or so. "It's this 32 million that's unexplainable," he added. "Yeah, OK, our fans will say it's because it's so fun, and I don't disagree with you, but 32 million is an outlandish number... a lot of people don't realize how much of an anomaly that is."
Buckley then put things in perspective, explaining that when games sell a million copies, that "fantastic achievement" is only enjoyed by 0.1% of games. "Two million, five million, that's platinum standard." And 10+ million? "Bonkers unless you're some massive franchise where you're gonna sell no matter what. It's unheard of." He even pointed to how "anomalous" last year was as things like Helldivers 2 and Black Myth: Wukong also reached similar highs. "Things like this don't happen at that kind of frequency," he added. "But these things aren't normal."
"People always ask us about it, and I genuinely don't have an explanation. Even if you make an incredibly fun game, I'm sure you'll have a big hit that will be super successful. But this, 10s of millions, I have no answer for that. It's a weirdly perfect storm."
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