Palworld: One Year Later, Is It Still Worth Playing?

In January 2024, Palworld was released in early access for PC (Steam) and Xbox, and was even included in the Game Pass Catalog from day one. It didn't take long for the game to become a success with the community.

Despite facing controversy for having a similar design to Pokémon, Pocket Pair's title broke several important milestones, such as having more than 2 million and a 100 thousand active players simultaneously on Steam alone, in addition to having sold more than 15 million copies in less than two weeks.

However, after a few months, Palworld saw a decrease in players and stepped into 2025 with an average of 49 thousand active players simultaneously on Steam. It’s common for games to have this drop after their initial launch, since usually the hype around the game dies down and fans move on to other titles.

The idea of ​​this article is to understand exactly how Palworld finds itself today: was it just the hype and no longer worth playing? Or did the developer manage to keep up the good work on the game to the point of making it interesting even in 2025? Check it out!

During 2024, Pocket Pair released several patch notes to add new content to the title. We'll summarize the two main ones here. It's worth mentioning that they’re both free.

Sakurajima (June 2024)

The first major update arrived six months after the game was released. It was a great way to keep the player base active while also re-engaging part of the community who had already left Palworld aside.

One of the main new features that came in June was Sakurajima, a new island which lent the update its name. It's a new Japanese-style environment to explore.

Other changes to PvE include more factions, raid bosses, and an oil rig, a base where players can obtain rare items, but to do so they’ll have to survive the high-level enemies who’ll fight with their own Pals. But Pocket Pair also thought about those players who prefer PvP and launched the Arena mode, where you can challenge your friends to battles.

Feybreak (December 2024)

Towards the end of the year, another huge content update arrived in Palworld, more specifically on December 23rd. Feybreak was another update that brought a new location to explore, that bears the same name.

This update also served as a means to announce the game's first major collaboration, which happened with Terraria. We already have access to the “Meowmere” weapon and the developer has promised even more items coming from Terraria throughout 2025.

Feybreak was also responsible for bringing new game modes such as Hardcore, where your death and that of your Pals are permanent, as well as Random Pals, a setting that randomizes the spawns of the little monsters and makes it completely chaotic.

Of course, here we’ve only given a brief summary of them. These updates played an important role in delivering hours of content to fans and I believe they were successful. The fact that these big changes come every six months is a great move by Pocket Pair, and they’ve managed to bring consistency to innovate.

The fact that these additions were free was also essential to maintaining the audience. It’s a relief for fans to see Palworld working this way in a market that’s increasingly working with paid DLCs and expansions for a title that was once sold at full price.

And the numbers reflect this importance: whenever Palworld is reaching a really low audience on the Steam platform, updates arrive and the game draws its player base back in

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Absolutely! Many people compare today's numbers with those from early 2024 and believe that the game failed. Of course, we’ll probably never see Palworld with millions of players active at the same time again, but the average of 49 thousand active players on Steam is already enough to put the game in the top 50 or 40 most played on the entire platform!

Palworld is still a game focused on PvE, and we still see it being ahead of competitive online titles like Overwatch 2, Brawlhalla and Rocket League, which have maintained the same player base for almost 10 years. Usually, we also find Pocket Pair's game better positioned than its main direct competitor, Ark.

Since it’s not a competitive game, its ability to attract an audience in live broadcasts is low, with very uninteresting numbers on Twitch. However, we still see many channels talking about tips and curiosities for Palworld on YouTube.

Reddit is another network where “Pokémon with weapons” is still popular, groups dedicated to the game debate daily on interesting topics for the community and always receive several interactions and comments. We know how good it is to have a space to ask that one specific question about a game, and I’m happy to say that Palworld still has that.

The main negative point we’ve highlighted in our Palworld Review was the huge amount of bugs and problems. Crashes, connection errors, visual bugs and Pals appearing in unusual places like on top of trees were just some of the issues we faced at launch.

The most frustrating issues, such as crashes or your character literally going through the ceiling, have been fixed. But it’s still possible to experience some visual issues, as well as finding Pals stuck or in unexpected places, and this is clearly annoying, especially if we remember that these are issues from over a year ago.

Another bug frequently reported by the community happens when you’re in a boss fight and one of your monsters simply doesn’t attack. I confess that I haven’t experienced this firsthand, but it’s worth mentioning.

Of all the topics, I believe this has been the one that has seen the least improvement since launch.

If you were one of the users who played it at launch and haven't logged in for over a year, for sure. As long as you’re patient with some visual bugs, which are not that many, you’ll have a great time. The updates have brought even more features to be explored, as well as greater challenges against new bosses and factions.

If you've never played it, I also think it's worth giving the game a chance, given that it was already highly rated and it’s even better today. Of course, it has problems, nothing compared to the beginning of the year, but I recommend going in with a tolerant mindset towards bugs. Palworld is still a great title and deserves your attention.

I hope this article has helped you! I'm available to answer any questions and suggestions.