Palworld is back in Steam's top 10 thanks to its Terraria update, but one dev is "sure it'll be branded a 'dead game' for the 100th time a week from now"

For some reason, it became cool to hate on Palworld despite its immense popularity. I get that it's not for everyone, but a loud group of love to declare it a "dead game" constantly. Well, community manager and designer John "Bucky" Buckley is sick of it. Especially since Palworld is currently sitting at number nine in Steam's top 10 most-played, meaning it's very much alive and kicking.

At the time of writing, Palworld is sitting at 70,181 players with a 122,512 peak in the last 24 hours. While these numbers do pale in comparison to its all-time peak of 2.1 million, they hardly show it's a dead game.

In fact, player numbers are improving thanks to its Terraria crossover update that launched June 25, which is what pushed it back into the top 10. "I’m sure it'll be branded a 'dead game' for the 100th time a week from now, but it's nice to see Palworld consistently reach the top 10 every major update," Bucky tweets. "A million thanks to you, gamers."

If you look at Palworld's concurrent player data on SteamDB, you'll see that both the Feybreak update and this Terraria crossover sparked renewed interest in the survival and creature capture game. Terraria will also be getting Pals in its world, but we don't know when that update is coming.

It's impressive for a non-live-service game to retain this many players. Of the other games in the top 10, only Stardew Valley and Palworld aren't multiplayer live-service titles – although with the sheer number of updates the farming sim gets you could make the argument it's close to being one.

If you've already checked out all the new additions to Palworld, have a look at our list of the best survival games next.