In recent years, it has almost become a trend on social media. One constantly sees a game with declining player numbers and the headline that it is “dead.” Now the Head of Publishing of Palworld has intervened and explained why that is nonsense.
Who is it about? Bucky is the former Community Manager and now Head of Publishing & Communications at Pocketpair, the creators of Palworld.
Like many gamers, he probably came across a post while scrolling through X.com that explained that Marathon and ARC Raiders are “dead” and that the extraction games genre is too. The post further explains that no one plays shooters anymore and everyone is probably enjoying MECCHA CHAMELEON instead.
The publisher chief of Palworld does not want to let this post pass and therefore clarifies from the developer side why games often aren’t as “dead” as is always portrayed.
Here you can see a trailer for Marathon:
Games are livelier than many think
What does the chief say? According to Bucky’s response on X.com, many misunderstand what “current players” actually mean. According to him, one must understand that 5,000 players at 3:00 PM are not necessarily the same 5,000 players at 3:01 PM.
For the developers, it is therefore much more important to evaluate the total number of players in a day or a month to perceive changes. After all, 500 players could log out while 500 others log in at the same time, and the number of “concurrent players” would not change.
How many players does a game need? Bucky makes it clear that of course one wants millions and billions of players to play their title. At the same time, it has become fashionable to simply call games “dead” because it generates clicks.
Thus, he explains further in his post that the best PvP games have had only a few thousand players at peak for years and manage perfectly well with that. An example is Foxhole, which has consistently been around 3,000 players at peak in recent months.
Bucky explains that games do die, of course. However, it is “disingenuous” to scream “dead game” for thousands of games every year that are indeed very active.
Is he right? Yes! Many games also do well without a multitude of active players. At the same time, the constant posting of “Dead Game” harms titles that actually have a good player base right now, as these claims sow insecurity among fans.
If you look at the examples of the post that Bucky is upset about, you see on SteamDB that an ARC Raiders had over 56,000 players who played it simultaneously on Sunday. Even for Marathon, there are still over 10,000 concurrent players according to SteamDB, which is far from a “dead” title.
This is also a problem for MMORPGs, which could very well appear totally active with only a few hundred players at peak and used to be that way, but now constantly have to be labeled as “dead,” even though there are enough players for all activities. Just think of all the “WoW killers” and how things are now for them and for WoW.
Have you also ever been annoyed that your favorite game was referred to as “dead”? Feel free to write it in the comments! Even if Marathon is not “dead,” something seems to be brewing behind the scenes at Bungie: Despite Free Week, Marathon collapses – Insider says: Bungie is facing the next disaster
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