Today, PocketPair announced in a video message that it aims to release Palworld 1.0 next year. To achieve that goal, they will focus on polishing, which means the rest of 2025 won't feature truly big updates to the early access version. Communications Director and Publishing Manager 'Bucky' explained:
We've reached a crossroads and need to decide what comes next. While we have a lot of ideas for where we want to take Palworld, we also need to start thinking about 1.0. Beyond just adding new content, there's a lot of cleanup that needs to be done before Palworld can exit early access. It's no secret that it has a lot of quirks and jank, and we want to take the time to properly address those before releasing the game. With that in mind, we plan to start that cleanup this year. Our goal is to ultimately release Palworld next year in 2026. And we think taking the time now to fix those problems will ultimately lead to a better game. So, what does this mean? It means that things will be a little quiet from us for the rest of this year. It also means our winter update won't be as big as Feybreak was. We hope our players understand that we're taking this extra time to improve the game overall. Now, that said, it doesn't mean there will be no updates. We still do have a few surprises planned for our winter update this year. We just want to be transparent about where we're headed and the development of Palworld going forward. It is not slowing down or scaling back; quite the opposite. Version 1.0 will be a major milestone for us, and we have a truly massive amount of content planned for the 1.0 update. Rather than rushing it, we believe that laying the right foundation now will lead to a better game in the end.
Bucky also said that PocketPair is also doing other things, such as supporting other small developers through a publishing division and even starting to research other game ideas for future projects. Of course, Palworld is still what most of the company is concentrating on, and it couldn't be any different given the incredible success achieved when the game launched in early 2024, breaking record after record for the first few weeks. To this day, PocketPair's survival action monster taming game is third on Steam's all-time concurrent player chart with 2.1 million players. Only Black Myth: Wukong and PUBG have done better. Overall, Palworld has surpassed 32 million players across all platforms earlier this year.
However, the Japanese developer also has to deal with the Nintendo lawsuit, which was filed nearly a year ago for alleged patent infringement. PocketPair is fighting the lawsuit in court, but in the meantime, they were forced to introduce some changes to the game.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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