“Palworld” emerged seemingly out of nowhere on Friday, releasing on PC’s Steam shop and Xbox, and has now sold more than 5 million copies in three days. It immediately became the most played video game on the planet, with more than 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam as of Monday morning. It has amassed a larger concurrent audience than every Steam game besides “PUBG: Battlegrounds” and “Counter-Strike 2.” That’s larger than the biggest games of the last two years, “Elden Ring,” “Baldur’s Gate 3” and “Hogwarts Legacy.”
Pocketpair, an independent studio in Japan, announced “Palworld” in 2021 with a bizarre trailer of cute critters who look suspiciously indistinguishable from Pokémon, except the monsters were not only armed with assault rifles, but are involved in mass-scale weapons development. “Pokémon with guns” became the meme. It was a joke.
Then the game launched Friday in early access, meaning the game is unfinished but sold to players who can provide feedback and data as developers finish a project. It had very little marketing before launch. The likeliest explanation for its sudden popularity: Pokémon is the largest entertainment brand in the world, and people have been starving for a high-definition, free-roaming and online monster-catching experience.
While the monsters look like Pokémon, the game itself is more of a survival game, closer to “Minecraft,” where players have to forage for resources to build new structures and tools for themselves, further enhancing the adventure and play possibilities. “Palworld” adds the twist of letting your monster “pals” do the manual labor around your home. When I dropped a water-shooting penguin off at my farm, she immediately waddled over to the fields and began watering. After 10 hours of play, I’ve created a self-sustaining gated community with mining and logging operations, a fully operational and staffed kitchen, a dormitory of 12 beds, a sauna for entertainment and relaxation, and a machine gun turret defense system.
In short, “Palworld” is a popular game because you can give an assault rifle to a monkey, and it turns out to be a good, safe, fruitful decision, and most importantly, it’s funny. Many also hope the success of “Palworld” would motivate the Pokémon Co. to evolve its game formula and technology.
— Gene Park in Pokémon with guns? Welcome to ‘Palworld,’ 2024’s first viral hit game.
