For reasons totally unrelated to the release of Monster Hunter Wilds, Palworld developer Pocketpair has given its team a “special holiday” today, 28th February.
In a memo, staff were advised that as many employees hinted that they may be too unwell to work today, management had decided to give the team the day off as a “special holiday”.
“On 28th February, we received a series of puzzling reports from many employees that they might feel unwell the next day, so we decided to institute a special holiday for the company,” the memo said (as translated by Google).
It then confirmed a special day’s holiday has been awarded to most departments – it’s unclear what teams won’t be eligible – and stressed to players that the time off would not impact Palworld or Craftopia, with scheduled updates progressing as planned (thanks, Automaton).
Monster Hunter Wilds currently boasts an all-time player peak of 987,482, although it seems likely it will smash past this number over the weekend. This makes Wilds one of the most-played games on Steam, surpassing peak player numbers for the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring.
In comparison, Monster Hunter World has an all-time player peak of 334,684, meaning Wilds has almost tripled the former’s peak player numbers in less than a day.
In the Eurogamer Monster Hunter Wilds review, our Matt awarded it 4/5, saying: “Wilds remains an exhilarating piece of work – so refined, so alive, so giddily, chaotically joyful when it all comes together that it feels like the ultimate culmination of everything the series has been working toward over the last two decades.
“And if it continues Monster Hunter’s legacy of generous post-launch support – where the series has traditionally felt the freest to get daft and indulge in its more sadistic tendencies – it’ll be fascinating to see how this beautiful new baseline for the series develops.”
