Palworld Lead Slams "Dead Game" Critics After 1.0 Success

Palworld Lead Uses Recent Success To Hit Back At "Dead Game" Critics Published Jul 31, 2026, 2:18 PM EDT Joshua Robertson is an editor for TheGamer, having working in news, guides, features, and reviews since 2022. They have written thousands of news stories, ranging from industry-breaking events, to smaller, more personal community pieces, and have covered several high-profile showcases such as The Game Awards and Nintendo Directs. Joshua is considered an expert in soulslikes, horror, JRPGs and everything Final Fantasy, having written extensive coverage for massively popular online titles like Final Fantasy 14. The phrase “dead game” is thrown around a lot these days, especially if a game isn’t doing too well in terms of player numbers. “Dead game” does not refer to a game that is actually dying, like Destiny 2, but games that are still very much alive, but dealing with slightly lower player counts. Even then, the game could still be healthy, but nowhere near its launch peak. Pretty much every live service game you can name has been accused of being a “dead game”, ranging from Marvel Rivals, to Arc Raiders, to Marathon. Another game that was often the receiver of the “dead game” moniker was Palworld, which launched to a whopping 2 million peak player count, though that gradually fell to around 50,000 a few weeks ago. However, ever since Palworld's official launch out of early access, its fortunes have turned, seeing almost one million players come flooding back upon the release of version 1.0. Even now, just over two and a half weeks after launch, Palworld is still managing a 24-hour peak player count of roughly half a million. It’s a huge success. Palworld Dev Pokes Fun At “Dead Game” Critics It’s so successful that Palworld's own developers couldn’t help but have a poke at those that declared it a “dead game” before the launch of 1.0. First reported by GamesRadar, Palworld head of publishing and communication John Buckley couldn’t resist tweeting about Palworld's current CCU, while also having a swipe at the haters. “It’s been 3 weeks since 1.0 dropped, and we’re still hitting half a mil ccu midweek? Bonkers,” says Buckely. “There’s people out there absolutely dying to post “Palworld lost X% of their players! Dead game!!”, and at this rate they’ll have to wait at least another week or two…” It’s a cheeky jab, and one that I personally enjoy because it does admit that the game will have a drop-off eventually, treating it as industry norm rather than something people should doom and gloom about, all in the same joke. Buckley does go on to thank people for making the game such a huge success, even though most people are joking about Palworld still being dead in the replies. If anything, this is proof that you can’t really rule out a game as being dead just because its peak isn’t as high as launch. Palworld is definitely still alive, and there are 500,000 people out there currently that would agree. Released July 10, 2026 ESRB T For Teen Due To Violence Developer(s) Pocket Pair, Inc. Publisher(s) Pocket Pair, Inc. Engine Unreal Engine 5 Multiplayer Online Multiplayer Cross-Platform Play Xbox Series X|S, pc