Palworld apprently costs 450k to 500k USD a month to host servers stated by devs

[Innominatam]

That is crazy and not sustainable that close to 6m a year, if they don't get that under control they will burn through all their funds just from servers...

Perhaps leaving it to people to host their own dedicated would be more ideal until they can get the price waaaaay more reasonable

source

https://www.gamesradar.com/palworld-dev-ceo-jokes-server-fees-could-bankrupt-the-studio-after-it-spends-dollar478000-to-never-let-the-service-go-down-no-matter-what/

[Qubert]

Originally posted by The Bofa On The Sofa:

Originally posted by A. Silvermane:

This is going to cause a :repoop: storm when the game drops in popularity and they can nolonger justify those kinds of server costs, shut some down, and have thousands of angry players flood the forums to describe how pocket pair scamed them.

Or it'd be a good way to segue into adding server transfers like they have in Ark

Even if they pay 6M a year, they have enough profits already to pay for 50 years of server time, idk what to tell you LOL

The cost is proportionate to the number of people on the server. You don't pay 400k for a server/servers that has only 10k players. Player count will drop a ton over the next year or so and so will the cost of running the servers.

[Jiffypop]

Originally posted by A. Silvermane:

This is going to cause a :repoop: storm when the game drops in popularity and they can nolonger justify those kinds of server costs, shut some down, and have thousands of angry players flood the forums to describe how pocket pair scamed them.

Or it'd be a good way to segue into adding server transfers like they have in Ark

When the game drops in popularity, so will the server costs???

If you're referencing though how there's so many official servers, and you think that they'll shut down all the ones that some people play on to match the population, still no. Although there is a little bit of a cost for just hosting the server, the main source of cost comes from players playing on it. As in, it would be cheaper to fit 100 players on 10 servers instead of 100 players on 50 servers, but not by a tragic amount.

[Silberfuchs]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Ok now let's do some math.
That means that if Palworld is 5M a year, then it's suggesting Youtube is only 200 times more maintenance than Palworld, a little rust like game. Not very realistic.

Streaming is indeed expensive, but so are game servers.
Sure, Youtube is MASSIVE, but:

1) Youtube is owned by Google, one of the biggest players in town => they have their own hardware that is highly cost optimized. Despite this it costs 1-2 billions to run Youtube.
2) Right now Palworld is at it's absolute peak in regards to player activity, 2+ million players online at once is something even giant MMOs like WoW rarely see happening, all of this on hastily rented server capacity.

Youtube may be massive, but in terms of activity i can absolutely see Palworld eating up around 0.1 - 0.5%% of what a streaming giant like Youtube needs.

Obviously the costs for Palworld servers will go down over time (because the average player will play way less than now), while more sales come in every single second for the foreseeable future.

Pocketpair was indeed in danger of going bancrupt, WAS... because hundreds of millions in revenue tend to solve issues like that real fast.

[Lunacy]

Why do servers cost so much? Isn't it just storage, internet, and hydro?

[Lord Bofa]

Originally posted by Qubert:

Originally posted by The Bofa On The Sofa:

Even if they pay 6M a year, they have enough profits already to pay for 50 years of server time, idk what to tell you LOL

The cost is proportionate to the number of people on the server. You don't pay 400k for a server/servers that has only 10k players. Player count will drop a ton over the next year or so and so will the cost of running the servers.

I said "even if"

[Khergit Horse Archer]

Originally posted by Lunacy:

Why do servers cost so much? Isn't it just storage, internet, and hydro?

easy to build and easy to scale also leads to scaling prices

[Knee]

end users shouldn’t be worrying about this

[Qubert]

Originally posted by The Bofa On The Sofa:

Originally posted by Qubert:

The cost is proportionate to the number of people on the server. You don't pay 400k for a server/servers that has only 10k players. Player count will drop a ton over the next year or so and so will the cost of running the servers.

I said "even if"

I know, just confused why some seem to think it's unsustainable when that cost won't last long. I was just adding onto your point. Not only do they have to money to run it for a long time, plus the cost will drop anyway. This is a non issue.

[Xilo The Odd]

Originally posted by Lunacy:

Why do servers cost so much? Isn't it just storage, internet, and hydro?

you pay for the hardware hosting it, the people maintaining the hardware, probably some other fees for international use or other mumbo jumbo the companies tack on. you can only run so many instance of this games server on 1 CPU before you need more storage and processing power. how much i havn't the foggiest idea. but for 1 million people at 32 people max per instance, thats a lot of instances. my PC might be able to do 5 of those if i wasnt using it for anything else. and as much as i've put into this PC hardware wise its somewhere between 2-3k$ (including parts i've used in the past it'd be way more.) but a server, a good one is closer to the 10k range due to some boards being multi CPU socketed, supporting way more RAM than any computer for a consumer would ever need, and having redundant storage to ensure no data is lost due to a hardware failure. some even fancy enough you could just unhook a rack of drives while its running and service isnt halted at all.

[Tazz]

Originally posted by E.:

Originally posted by Aerodynamic:

they just made millions lmao, I'm sure they can handle it.

Bruh six mill a year will kill the company, keep in mind you just pay once and there is no micro transactions or ways for them to generate more funds within the game once you buy it.

they might be able to take the hit short term but no way can they long term thats waaay to much money

This game doesn't have microtransactions like any other mmo online game how will they survive not just throwing Pals sphere to catch Bill Gate are they

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Originally posted by Silberfuchs:

Originally posted by GamingWithSilvertail:

The money they made didnt arrive yet.

So what?

That's what banks are for.
It's not like valve is known for not paying publishers/ devs what they are owned based on their sales on steam.

It's pretty easy to get a juicy credit or a large investment if you have hundreds of millions in revenue just around the corner.

It's just the fact that they're not scheduled to release the funds untill at least 19th of february.

What if game is mass refunded soon for whatever reason, they arnt going to get as much money then, then what?

[CT-99 STRIKER]

They are selling like ~1m per day on Steam, few millions on Xbox Consoles and they're getting a fat paycheck to be on Gamepass, Heck even Xbox is backing them fully with advertising and console bundles lol. They made in half a day what they will pay per year to run the servers. Also they're not 10 but before release the number for this game was around ~40 to 50 and they are now hiring more people. They hit a gold mine, they better invest to keep on giving.

[Kriya Takagi]

Originally posted by Knee:

end users shouldn’t be worrying about this

this is true

[Kriya Takagi]

Originally posted by Ron Swanson:

They are selling like ~1m per day on Steam, few millions on Xbox Consoles and they're getting a fat paycheck to be on Gamepass, Heck even Xbox is backing them fully with advertising and console bundles lol. They made in half a day what they will pay per year to run the servers. Also they're not 10 but before release the number for this game was around ~40 to 50 and they are now hiring more people. They hit a gold mine, they better invest to keep on giving.

temporary gold mine till its novelty wears off

[Silberfuchs]

Originally posted by GamingWithSilvertail:

What if game is mass refunded soon for whatever reason, they arnt going to get as much money then, then what?

That's easy as well:
Lets say they are expecting 200 million $ of revenue in a couple of weeks, but ♥♥♥♥ happens and they only get half, so what?

Is any bank going to decline a credit for a couple of millions based on "only" making 100 million? Of course not.

Besides:
Those servers come at a ~0.5 million $ cost per month, but nobody said anything about said costs being paid in advance. For all we know those can be paid later.

But it doesn't even matter, right now investors are charging at Pocketpair like moths to a flame. Everyone wants a share of the cake, hence the last problem they have right now is money.

Besides:
Microsoft owes them money for those gamepass downloads as well, and Microsoft has a vested interest in Palworlds success => Microsoft can pay any random server bill with absolute ease.