“Not bad for a dead game” – Palworld developers counter their haters, celebrate a successful year

The year 2025 seems to have been quite successful for Palworld despite a dispute with Nintendo. One of the developers of Palworld thanks the community for the success of the game in 2025.

How does Palworld celebrate its success? On X Palworld shared its success from 2025. The game has made it to the top spots on four overall top lists on Steam: 2nd place in Most Played; 2nd place in Most Played on the Steamdeck, 3rd place in Controller Games, and 3rd place in Top Sellers.

One of the developers, Bucky, thanked on X for the community’s support:

Two years later, we are still grateful for the endless support and kindness of our community. Thank you very much, dear Palworld players.

In conclusion, Bucky added: “Not bad for a dead game!!” taking a stand against the game’s haters. In the past, it has been repeatedly claimed that the game would become less popular after its grand launch.

Palworld remains very popular despite Early Access

How is Palworld doing right now? Palworld was already a hit with its Early Access release in January 2024, as the gameplay strongly resembled Pokémon but with guns, and the developers combined this style with building mechanics. Since then, there have been several updates and innovations.

In September 2025, Nintendo sued Palworld over an alleged patent infringement. The Pals in the game were said to bear too much resemblance to Pokémon. There was also a dispute about capturing monsters with balls. Nevertheless, Pocketpair released its monster hit on the PS5 and continued on.

In 2025, there were also some collaborations with other games: once with the free survival game Once Human and another time with Terraria.

The developers have also set their sights on a planned release: In 2026, the time will finally come with Update 1.0.

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The future of Pocketpair seems to be bright not only with Palworld. The studio has now announced a new game reminiscent of a cozy farming game: While Nintendo wants to ban every copy of Pokémon, Palworld announces a new game on Steam with pocket monsters in the style of Stardew Valley