• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      Pocketpair says it’s sold about 12 million copies of Palworld on Steam. At $30 each, that puts Palworld’s gross revenue at $360 million so far, and that’s ignoring its Xbox sales (it’s on Game Pass, too).

      Looks like a little more than 2M.

    • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Yeah but even at $360m, $500k every month is operating costs for the server only, and doesnt include the business’ other expenses. That’s a big chunk of profit going to operating costs.

      If the business had no other expenses then yeah, they could keep the servers up for 60 years. But more expenses lowers that and the look to get a subscription model or new game becomes more attractive to a company.

      • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Ive seen articles that also say they’ve paid $500k on monthly server fees (ie total not per month) a couple times, so it could also just be a game of telephone messing up the info

      • etchinghillside@reddthat.com
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        11 months ago

        They can optimize over time to get that number down. I assume they’re being a little sloppy right now in just over provisioning to keep up with peak demand.

        But, yes, not particularly sustainable long term on just an initial purchase.

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      They need to make 17,000 sales every month perpetually to cover the costs, and then those sales will cause the server costs to rise as more people start playing.

      It’s a one time income to cover perpetual costs. They will probably either need to start raising prices, reduce server costs, or maybe start a subscription service eventually, or start doing micro transactions.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          And I’m guessing their focusing on server improvements in software to further reduce the costs. $500k is a lot of money for this kind of thing, I still balk at the $50k or so my company pays and we’re nowhere near the scale of Palworld.

    • M137@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Why did you randomly choose that number? It sold more than that on its first day.

      • etchinghillside@reddthat.com
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        11 months ago

        I vaguely recalled hearing a number of 1-2 million - but in hindsight it was a number related to peak consecutive users.