"Palworld is now one of only seven games that have seen over 1 million concurrent players on Steam – the others include: PUBG (3.2 mil), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (1.8 mil), Counter-Strike 2 (1.4 mil), Lost Ark (1.3 mil), Dota 2 (1.2 mil), and Cyberpunk 2077 (1 mil)."
i played for about 3 hours, and afaik you don't have to make/use the guns. pals don't even have death animations they just get anime KO swirly eyes and you get whatever their drops are in your inventory, so you could even easily convince yourself youre just knocking them out like in Pokemon.
IMO the only reason not to buy it is the lack of depth beyond being a base-building survival game. I thought there would be some big story and grand questline, but nope. youre just dropped in the world and guided through base building and pal catching.
I'm at the spear and bow stage and it barely feels like weapons. When you "kill" a pal, they just get X.X eyes and fall over. We'll see how it feels when the butchering starts.