• ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    1.5 million concurrent players with a 99% drop off is STILL THOUSANDS OF CONCURRENT PLAYERS for an indie game.

    The only games that can’t work with a playerbase in “only” 4 digits are MMOs. Otherwise there’s no excuse.

    Same thing is said about Helldiver’s 2,and there were 60k online players in game last week on a weekday. That’s exceedingly healthy, especially when games run most of the infrastructure peer to peer anyways!

    I hate the narrative, and I wish more games supported private servers for this same reason. There is no reason why a good game that failed to become the next Fortnite shouldn’t still enjoy a long life as a cult favorite for decades.

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    I bought palworld.
    i played it.
    i enjoyed it.
    i had enough.
    i stopped.
    there is nothing wrong with this sequence of events.

        • Crowfiend@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Only twenty?!?? Man I play NMS like I play Sims or Minecraft. I put 100hrs in, get bored and don’t play for a while, when I come back there’s been at least one or two updates and I’m easily able to put back in another hundred with new/revised content.

          Not that it’s a competition, I’m just surprised cause of how much time I put into things. (x_x)

          • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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            2 months ago

            There are only a few games in my steam library where I have 100 or more hours.

            • Crowfiend@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              That’s crazy. Not even counting time spent on pirated versions of games, any game that I truly enjoy has at least 300hrs logged. I think my most played game is sitting at a little over 1100hrs because fuuuck am I a sucker for a game dev that respects and engages their players, but that’s a different story to tell.

              • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
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                2 months ago

                There are plenty of games that I loved that I only played for 30 or so hours. Hours aren’t everything

              • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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                2 months ago

                I mean just because I have 40-60 hours on games I like doesn’t mean I didn’t truly enjoy them. I played through the campaign and side quests and after a while life happened or I just got bored or played another game.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    This whole “dead game” rhetoric seems to stem from the sane idea present in capitalism that something must be constantly growing.

    People have bought Palworld, and they’ve made their money back and then some. And despite this not being a “live service” type game, it’s still receiving updates and still has active players.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      Pretty sure Stardew Valley got more post launch content than many actual live service games…

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      People have bought Palworld, and they’ve made their money back and then some

      Yes, but they didn’t sell themselves out to Microsoft or EA at their peak in order to hook into the Endless Invasive Advertisement Machine, so they’ll never be a true success story like Origin Systems, Westwood Studio, or Mythic Entertainment.

  • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    whether a game is “dead” or not only really matters for online games with matchmaking. If a game requires a large playerbase to function, like an MMO or a matchmaking based competitive game, the game can die. This doesn’t apply to single player or small scale coop games.

    Anyone will get the full single player game experience even if they are the only one playing. If the game has multiplayer, like coop or vs play where the expectation is that you will find the person who you will play with, the game cannot die.

    Calling palworld a dead game is just as nonsensical as calling starfield dead because of a lower playercount. It literally doesn’t matter for this kind of game.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    2 months ago

    It was a flash-in-the-pan meme game. Of course it’s “dead” in the popularity contest. Only the handful of actual dedicated fans still play it. The majority has moved on to the next meme fad craze/current popular title.

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      I think it has real staying power, if they can make the rest of the game as content rich as the first dozen or so hours. It’s only a flash in the pan because there’s not more fuel. As is the case for a lot of early access.

        • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          The reason they all fail is because of lack of content for end game BUT they fail in that way because they refuse to learn from the titans. Why do you think minecraft and terraria have had such a long healthy life. It’s cause they have a robust modding community. They need to make the game around making it easy to mod for regular people. Look at minecraft skins, they’re easy to make and sites have easy tools to help make em so everyone dips their toes into it and creates unique custom content to add to the minecraft skin library.

  • Rinox@feddit.it
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    2 months ago

    Checked SteamDB, it says the online players are between 20k and 50k, and it’s summer (meaning everyone is out and about).

    How does one take these numbers and proclaim a game dead? It’s like 30th in the overall Steam Chart for number of online players.

  • Corhen@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Strongly agree, palworld didn’t need to sustain hundreds of thousands of players for years. Not every game needs to be factorio. It did what it set out to.

    I bought it, played it for a while, and moved on. nothings wrong.