this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Pokémon with guns wouldn't have gotten millions of sales on its own. When the trailers came out people were laughing but they weren't exactly eager to play.
Given the persistent popularity of survival crafting games, I think "Ark with knockoff pokemon" is exactly what people wanted. After all, even before this, Pixelmon was one of the most popular Minecraft mods.
The day before sold millions (but this one was refunded by millions too) and everybody and their mom knew it was a scam since it was announced like 2 or 3 years ago. Internet is weird, if something becomes viral it will sell, the quality does not matter, people just wants to be in
As far as I can tell The Day Before was overhyped early and people bought it because of the marketing. Palworld did some advertising, but the mass adoption appears to be mostly word of mouth that the game is actually fun when it was made available in early access.
That matches what I have seen from people commenting and my personal experience as I don't remember hearing about it before and hopped on because of friends recommending it. Palworld is a word of mouth success like Valheim and for similar reasons of competent styling, smooth gameplay, and survival that isn't punishing the player from the moment the game starts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDayBefore/comments/lwaach/people_keep_saying_its_a_scam_whats_the_scam/
That's a 3 years old post. Everybody knew it was a scam back then. to the point the studio released "We are not a scam, trust me bro" statements (which made it more obvious it was a scam)
Internet has been talking about "pokemon with guns" for 2 years or so since the developers were already famous because they launched a "Breath of the Wild" knock off (Craftopia) that also sold well (not at the same level of palworld, but for being the first title of a brand new indie studio it sold really well)
Apparently not everyone knew the day before was a scam or it wouldn't have sold millions of units. Just because some people predicted it does not mean that the general population had any awareness of that expectation.
People started to sell their steam accounts that owned the game and keys for the game for hundreds of dollars when it was announced the game was some bad that it was going to be removed from steam
If something is popular it will sell, the quality does not matter. You have the best example in Pokemon itself
The Day Before did not sell a single million units and Palworld is not getting widely refunded, even though everyone who starts it, dressed like a caveman, immediately realizes they aren't getting to play with guns anytime soon. There were streamers showing this even before the game was out.
It's true that virality is unpredictable and popularity is not a measure of quality, but I think a lot of people are being overly dismissive of the fact that Palworld managed to hook people with something that appealed to them. Not to say it's a bastion of quality and originality, obviously not, but it has something going for it.