I bought palworld.
i played it.
i enjoyed it.
i had enough.
i stopped.
there is nothing wrong with this sequence of events.

whether a game is “dead” or not only really matters for online games with matchmaking. If a game requires a large playerbase to function, like an MMO or a matchmaking based competitive game, the game can die. This doesn’t apply to single player or small scale coop games.

Anyone will get the full single player game experience even if they are the only one playing. If the game has multiplayer, like coop or vs play where the expectation is that you will find the person who you will play with, the game cannot die.

Calling palworld a dead game is just as nonsensical as calling starfield dead because of a lower playercount. It literally doesn’t matter for this kind of game.

Strongly agree, palworld didn’t need to sustain hundreds of thousands of players for years. Not every game needs to be factorio. It did what it set out to.

I bought it, played it for a while, and moved on. nothings wrong.

This whole “dead game” rhetoric seems to stem from the sane idea present in capitalism that something must be constantly growing.

People have bought Palworld, and they’ve made their money back and then some. And despite this not being a “live service” type game, it’s still receiving updates and still has active players.