Palworld’s new Sakurajima expansion generates record number of players for three months

While I was just talking about Helldivers 2 and its inability to retain players, at the suggestion of some readers I took a look at how another game that blew up during the same period, Palworld, is doing right now.

The answer? After the just-released “Sakurajima” update, the answer is pretty good, as the game’s major new addition has just produced a player count that is the best the game has seen in three months, or its lifespan since its blockbuster release.

Palworld just surpassed a previous April record of 128,000 concurrent players and is now surpassing some of the biggest days in March, now that it’s the weekend and more people are playing. If it continues to rise, it could exceed a few more days this month, although I doubt it will reach a figure of more than 250,000 by the end of February.

I’ve gotten a lot of flak for previously documenting the game’s fall from its heights, but I said it was a live game at the time, and I stand by it now. In addition to frequent patches, it’s had a major update before that, and now a major Genshin Impact-style expansion to add to the map and release a ton of new content. Such as:

• A whole new island
• Many new Pals and Pal subspecies
• A new raid and hard mode boss
• An enemy oil rig base to invade
• More buildings
• New maximum level
• Dedicated servers for Xbox.

That’s a good amount of content and it seems to have definitely reinvigorated players. As for what I was talking about earlier with Helldivers 2, that game didn’t announce anything resembling a major expansion and failed to reverse the decline in player numbers. But this full-blown expansion to Palworld has definitely reignited a ton of interest.

There is absolutely no way that Palworld will ever reach its second most-played Steam game record of all time, which is 2.1 million competitors. It was truly crazy and a viral spread that cannot be replicated. But if it continues to produce significant content updates and expansions like this, it could stay healthy for a long time. However, unlike Genshin Impact, for example, without microtransactions this means no ongoing revenue, only continued sales of new games, a la No Man’s Sky. But it’s nice to see it growing, because I had a lot of fun with it at launch. Maybe if I can let go of Shadow of the Erdtree, I’ll give it a chance.

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