Palworld Achieves Highest Player Count of Any Paid Steam Game Since 2018; It’ll Mean Little

After four days, Palworld, an early-access survivor game described as “Pokemon with guns,” grossed ~$108M over three days en route to the 2nd highest concurrent player count for a paid title on Steam. It’s an outstanding success for Pocket Pair, a 50-person Japanese team with $7m raised. But like early access hits Valhiem, Battlebit, and…

Supply Chains In Everything

Supply-chain economics is as much a game design responsibility as it is production. Core design influences the production gap between Blizzard’s Overwatch heroes and, say, Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege (R6:Siege) Operators. Ubisoft has shipped an average of .51 new Operators per month since launch compared to Blizzard’s .21 new heroes, more than double the pace.…

The Reverse-Blizzard Thesis

The reverse-Blizzard thesis has arrived. Firms like Blizzard, Supercell, Valve, and even Apple thrived on popularizing but not inventing mechanics and genres. Blizzard’s next fresh franchise, a survival crafting game, draws heavily from predecessors like Ark: Survival Evolved and Rust. Those titles failed to scale to mainstream adoption; if players need a server browser for…