When a rumor appears on the web, the time-honored phrase “take this with a pinch of salt” must always be applied. Pocketpair, which develops Palworld, reminded us of this in a certain way in a recent post published on X, while persistent rumors suggested that the game was going to change its economic model.
No free-to-play for Palworld, Pocketpair no longer considers it
It all started with an interview conducted by the ASCII Japan website and transcribed by Automaton. The latter, which was about Palworld’s business model, gave rise to a lot of speculation after its publication.
Indeed, the developer admits to thinking about the idea of making Palworld free-to-play in order to ensure the longevity of the title. However, the person concerned spoke this weekend to clarify the studio’s position on this possibility… which will not see the light of day.
Pocketpair states in its message that this interview is misleading since it was conducted several months ago, assuring in passing that the development teams had reviewed their position in the meantime, because the free-to-play model “did not suit it”.
The full statement:
Regarding the future of Palworld
TL;DR – We are not changing the business model of our game, it will remain buy-to-play and not f2p or GaaS.
Recently, an article was published in which we discussed the possible future direction of Palworld and ideas for continuing the game for a long time.
Actually, this interview was conducted several months ago. At that time, we were still thinking about the best way for Palworld to create a sustainable game that continues to grow. We are still discussing it internally, as it is very difficult to find the ideal path, but we have already decided that the F2P/GaaS approach did not suit us.
Palworld was never designed with this model in mind, and it would take too much work to adapt the game at this point. Additionally, we are very aware that this is not what our players want, and we always put our players first.
We still plan to release skins and DLC for Palworld in the future to support development.but we’ll talk to you about it again when we get closer to that point. For now, our priority remains to make Palworld the best game possible.
We apologize for any concern this may have caused, and hope this clarifies our position.
Thank you for your continued support of Palworld.
As you will have understood, the free-to-play option seems to be definitively ruled out, Pocketpair is instead focusing on the development of early access and the idea of offering skins and other DLC via microtransactions to ensure the sustainability of its latest creation.
As a reminder, Palworld has already set several records since its release, such as becoming the biggest launch of a third-party game in Xbox Game Pass. Palworld is currently available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, as well as in Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, and Xbox Cloud Gaming. The arrival of a PS5 version is not to be ruled out.
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