Pocketpair Still Doesn’t Know Why Palworld Was So Successful

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While speaking on a panel at GDC, Pocketpair’s John Buckley, who leads the Pocketpair Publishing arm of the firm, took a deep dive into the rampant and overwhelming success of Palworld. In January 2024, Palworld – which was dubbed ‘Pokémon with guns’ – was released to the open market, going on to secure 25 million players in a single month.

To this day, Pocketpair still has no idea how or why Palworld was such a roaring success, as Buckley revealed at GDC.

‘Things Started To Get Weird’

On the panel at the Game Developer’s Conference, John ‘Bucky’ Buckley reeled off his impression of the release of Palworld, which took place a little more than a year ago:

After examining a multitude of wishlists in the initial year itself, we became aware that something unusual was taking place, and it continued to unfold over time.

2023 was when things got really weird – we rose to number three on Steam wishlists, then we hit a crazy peak around November 2023. People always ask us, ‘Why? What happened? How did you get so much attention?’ But we don’t know. If we knew how to do it, we’d do it again, but we have no idea what happened.

Within this first week, we hit this disgusting number that makes me feel sick when I see it.

I can’t say exactly why we ended up with so many players. If anyone asks, just let them know that we’re not sure about the reason.

(thanks to GamesRadar for the quote)

Palworld became one of the best-selling games in history, shattering player count records and skyrocketing up the charts on social and streaming platforms worldwide. It was an overnight sensation, and it became the talk of the town mere hours after hitting the market.

Under the immense pressure of numerous players attempting to join, both Pocketpair and Epic Games experienced difficulties in managing the game’s demand. Consequently, the servers went down due to the overwhelming number of users trying to enjoy the game, causing them to struggle under this heavy stress.

While the player count has understandably petered off by now, Palworld remains a popular title that’s being updated by Pocketpair all the time. It wasn’t exactly a flash in the pan.

It’s tough to understand exactly why Palworld was such a success. Perhaps it’s the disbelief that it was ‘allowed’ to exist or the sheer inanity of the concept that pulled players in. Pocketpair doesn’t know, and I don’t know either.

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2025-03-18 12:20