We hit this disgusting number that makes me feel sick”: Palworld devs don’t know why their survival game was so successful – “If we knew how to do it, we’d do it again

Palworld Released in early access at the start of 2024 to immediately, headline-making success, Selling 2 Million Copies in 24 Hours and becoming the Second Game In Steam History To Hit 2 Million Concurrent Players. Despite rocky servers at launch and some Messy Business With Nintendo’s Lawyers Over Alleged Similarities Between Palworld and Pokemonthe game is widely considered a modern example of indie success, and the developers at pocketpair still aren’t all of the ingredients in the magic sauce they themelves connected.

Pocketpair has had solid success with its previous releases, but mostly in Asia, and nothing even remotely comparable to palworld’s international acclaim. At one point the studio expected roughly the same from palworld.

“The initial thinking for palworld was that this was a game for a Japanese audience Again,” said Pocketpair Community Manager John ‘Bucky’ Buckley During a Game Developer’s Conference Panel. “But we quickly got over a million wishlists within that first year, so we know at that point that something was happening. It kept going. […] And then we hit this crazy peace around November 2023. This peak never really stopped, it just kept going. People always ask us, ‘why? What happened? How did you get so much attention? ‘ We don’t know. If we know how to do it, we’d do it again, but we have no idea what happened. “

Palworld’s technical issues at launch mirrored those of many indie games that release to a degree of success that the developers had not anticipated. Enshrouded Comes To Mindas does it Helldivers 2. For PocketPair, the initial realization that palworld would become something special came on launch night.

“Not a lot of people know this, but most of our company at that time was a remote company,” Buckley said. “We had an office, but very few people went to the office. But everyone went on launch day. It was going to be a little celebration, a little bit of alcohol, a little bit of fun, and then go home. Later, Our Network Engineer, Our One Network Engineer, Said the Game Has Crashed.

“Within that first week, we hit this disgusting number that makes me feel sick when I see it,” he added. “And this was basically split over Steam and Xbox, which were our platforms at that time. Again, why did we get this many players? I don’t know, please don’t ask me. And just seeing this today still kind of freaks me out. vibes coming, and these bad vibes convince us to stop marketing for a while and go a little bit quiet. “

The bad vibes buckley is referencing include the sentiment that palworld was basically “pokemon with guns,” Something an indie developed is understandably likely to bristle at considering the pokemon company’s famously trigger-happy legal team. During the panel, he also discussed the hate the game received, accusations of plagiarized and ai-generated designs, and the threats feel to develop. Buckley Said During the Same GDC Panel That Nintendo’s palworld lawsuit “came as a shock” to pocketpair because patent infringement was “Something that no one even considered.”