The most indispensable thing in the gaming industry is various “rival” scripts. Today some people say that “Palworld” is competing for players of “Valheim”, and tomorrow someone will compare it with “Rust”, as if survival game developers are competing with each other every day. However, John Bucky Buckley, head of distribution and communications for Palworld, recently took it upon himself to dispel this myth. He said that the outside world has always thought that survival games are full of competition and even have “feelings”, but the actual situation is completely opposite. The development team gets along very well with each other because everyone has something in common, that is, they all love survival games.
Not only are they not fighting each other, they are also doing a Steam sale together!
Buckley revealed that he has been preparing for the “Super Survival Summer” event since the beginning of 2026, and has actively invited a number of survival game development teams to cooperate. This Steam pack brings together “Palworld”, “Rust”, “Valheim”, “V Rising”, “Sons of the Forest” and other 10 well-known survival games, the total price is about US$148.40 (approximately NT$4,380, HK$1,165, RM630), which is about 25% cheaper than the original price of US$197.90 (approximately NT$5,840, HK$1,555, RM840)! Buckley also said that this project is actually his “selfish plan”, hoping to expose more players to the entire survival game genre, rather than just focusing on a certain game.
The real enemy is never the game next door
Buckley believes that players will inherently play between different games. Today I am catching paloos with my friends in “Palworld”, tomorrow I go to “Valheim” to build a house, and the day after tomorrow I go to “Rust” and my house is ransacked. These are all normal things. Therefore, what developers really want to do is not to compete for players from each other, but to work together to expand the entire survival game market so that more people are willing to get involved with this genre. This statement has also made many players rethink that the so-called “competing product showdowns” may in many cases be just dramas amplified by the community and the media.
Players are making noise more seriously than the officials
Interestingly, this is not the first time Buckley has “cooled down” the gaming industry. A while ago, he publicly stated that a game should not be judged as “dead” just by looking at the number of people online at the same time on Steam. Now he has once again emphasized that there is actually no gunpowder among survival game developers as imagined by the outside world. It can only be said that players argue on the Internet every day who is the “King of Survival Games”, but in private the developers hold events together, do special sales together, and even appreciate each other’s works. Sometimes, the loudest quarrel is not the manufacturer, but the players who worry about the manufacturer.