Palworld Dev Says Playing The Same Game Forever Isn’t Healthy

A member of the Palworld development team has spoken up about how playing the same game all the time simply isn’t healthy for gamers or the industry. This was in response to claims that Palworld was a “dead” game despite still retaining 60,000 concurrent players instead of the two million it amassed at launch.

John Buckley, Palworld‘s community manager, was interviewed on the Going Indie YouTube channel this week where he gave a pretty open answer about the state of the gaming industry at the moment and how players who play the same game forever might send the wrong message to gaming companies. Buckley argued that Palworld was never meant to be played forever. In fact, he stated that if players continue to play the same game, it will make publishers and developers believe that more live service games are needed, which will dilute the market.

Buckley stated:

“I don’t think you need to be pushing yourself to play the same game all the time. It’s not healthy for us, it’s not healthy for developers, it’s not healthy for gamers, it’s not healthy for gaming media. And it’s just not healthy for our industry, because the more we push this kind of narrative, the more very large companies are going to just say ‘gamers want more live service’. And we’re just going to get more of these soulless live service games that come out then get shut down 9-12 months later because they’re not making enough money. And we all lose in that case.”

Buckley added that players should play more indie games and simply enjoy what they offer instead of being concerned that games aren’t keeping their attention forever or holding millions of players at a time. “Play all the indies you can,” he said. “Spend as much money on indies as you can. Really, really support the guys who are trying to make fun games. Who cares if there’s only five people playing it? Just enjoy yourself. Just enjoy games. I don’t think it needs to be any more complex than that.”

While Palworld surpassed nearly 25 million players in its first month of launch across all platforms, that number has since dipped as players completed the game’s content and moved onto other titles. Updates continue to roll out for Palworld, though it’s good to know that the developer isn’t being unrealistic or concerned about trying to keep millions of players locked into the game for fear of sending an understandably bad message to other publishers.

Source: Going Indie