I don’t buy that whatsoever and it sounds more like they are gatekeeping Sony in the most unintelligent way possible. I get they don’t want to throw their publishers under the bus that excuse seems incredibly weak.
Palword had 2,000,000 players two weeks ago on Steam alone and that isn’t taking to account data servers, asset servers and seed servers. One player may use 4 slots so that’s 8m servers in operation to facilitate one session per player outside of co-op. Counter-Strike also houses 10+ players per server so it’s non comparable although Valve operate in excess of 1m servers alone which just hold streams and match replays. The FIFA games usually have several million games played each day too plus EA have several other games also live. Fortnite also had 45m players in one day last year.
450,000 is ridiculous. The game shouldn’t have been published until the cap was increased and if they didn’t foresee more of this issue then that’s a gross underestimation of the industry today. If you have a successful game with endless growth potential then you plan ahead and Palworld is a prime example of how this should be done. It’s managing demand 101 and keeping the game flowing.