Palworld Community Lead Urges Gamers to Focus on Enjoyment Over Popularity

Palworld’s community lead, John ‘Bucky’ Buckley, urges gamers to focus on enjoying the games they love rather than worrying about whether a game is considered “dead.”

Palworld experienced a significant drop in active players, going from a peak of over two million concurrent players on Steam at launch to around 30,000 players today. Despite the decline, Bucky believes this is perfectly fine. In an interview, he advises, “just play the games you like” without concern for a game’s longevity. He emphasizes, “If you finish in a day, cool.”

Bucky argues that the push for gamers to stick to the same game continuously is not beneficial. While some games, like MMOs, are designed for long-term engagement, most games are not—and that is okay. “A lot more people are trying to push gamers to play games that aren’t really designed to be played for months on end,” Bucky explains, highlighting the potential harm in labeling games as “dead.”

According to Bucky, this mindset is unhealthy for developers, gamers, gaming media, and the industry as a whole. He points to the rise of live service games as a consequence of this narrative. “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 like really soulless live service games that come out and then get shut down . . . because they’re not making enough money. We all lose in that case.”

Ultimately, Bucky’s message is clear: players should “just enjoy games” regardless of their popularity or status. “Who cares if there’s only five people playing?” He concludes by emphasizing the importance of personal enjoyment, stating that the only player who truly matters when playing a game is you. “As long as you ‘just enjoy yourself’ in the process, of course.”