Fans Worry Palworld Will Be What PUBG Was To The Battle Royale Genre

Do I actually need to write an introduction to Palworld? Let me keep it brief: Palworld is Steam's biggest survival hit in recent years, if not one of the biggest successes ever. You build bases, tame creatures, and fight bosses. There have been discussions not only about its success but also about plagiarism allegations, but fans stood strong.

However, the huge success not only makes fans of the game rejoice, but also raises doubts. Do the big numbers Palworld is racking up also have downsides?

Palworld Turns Survival Games Mainstream

In the Palworld subreddit, a user posted their forecast for the gameplay style of Palworld. They suspect that in the coming years, not only indie developers will release games, but also AAA companies will jump onto the bandwagon of the monster survival genre's success.

I think Palworld is going to be what PUBG was to the Battle Royal genre of games by u/reddit_is_geh in Palworld

This kind of development has already been seen with games like PUBG: Battlegrounds, which kickstarted the success of the battle royale genre. The Last Man Standing principle had been picked up before, for example in the Hunger Games game mode of Minecraft, but it only gained popularity in the mainstream with PUBG. After that came AAA hits like Fortnite and other franchise adaptations like Call of Duty: Warzone.

In the comments, many express their approval of this development. For example, the idea of a game that combines Palworld mechanics with Monster Hunter graphics is eagerly awaited.

However, other voices are expressing concern that with the mainstream comes exploitation. User AdhesivenessEven6910 writes: "It won't be a new ERA when it's all cash shops, subscriptions, battle passes, P2W mechanics, it will just be more of the same awful AAA greed mechanics. A huge reason why Palworld is so popular is that it doesn't need any of that to be good and sell millions of copies."

The trust in large dev studios is not particularly high. However, in the discussion, there are also repeated takes addressing the fact that the survival genre is challenging for indie developers to execute.

This is evidenced by the abundance of survival games that have not been able to sustain themselves over time. Valheim is a title that is being mentioned a lot in the context, with a playerbase that shrinked from roughly 200k players at release to now 25k on average (which is still pretty solid, but you get the point).

Other users don't see Palworld as the game that made the survival genre big, referring to it as "ARK with Pokemon." However, they acknowledge that Palworld is making the genre more mainstream-friendly.

Many Palworld fans also doubt that the upcoming monster designs will be innovative.

Comment by u/reddit_is_geh from discussion in Palworld

After all, many players expect creatures reminiscent of Pokémon, making it difficult for original designs to compete. To avoid conflict with Nintendo, developers might opt for a more generic aesthetic.

It is certain that the success of Palworld has not gone unnoticed by major developers and publishers. The consequences of this will certainly not be one-sided. What we can glean from the success of Palworld is what players are yearning for. Studios will attempt to adapt to that and some will fail, others will succeed.