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Palworld recently celebrated its first anniversary, and to mark the occasion developer Pocketpair outlined its plans for the game’s second year, with a roadmap that includes co-op crossplay and an “ending scenario”.
But, why add an ‘ending’ now? Could it be because of Nintendo’s impending legal action against the game? Well, Pocketpair community manager John “Bucky” Buckley tells Eurogamer this ‘ending’ has actually been “mapped out for quite some time” – and even though it is on its way, it certainly doesn’t mean this is ‘the end’ of Palworld.
“The World Tree, where the ‘ending’ takes place, has been visible since day one,” Bucky tells me. “Many players suspected their journey would end there, and we’ve been asked repeatedly about when the World Tree will become available so we’re pretty excited to finally be opening the area up for players!”
Bucky admits “ending” may not actually be the best way to phrase things, but says he “can’t think of a better one” right now.
“While the World Tree will mark the conclusion of this particular journey, it’s by no means the end of Palworld,” he assures.
As for what else is still to come in Palworld, Bucky promises “exciting things” in the pipeline. “We might have announced the Terraria collaboration a bit prematurely,” he admits, “but everyone, including Re-Logic, was so excited that we thought it’d be fun to share early!”
Pocketpair remains “really excited about the direction [its] headed”, Bucky continued, including Pocketpair’s newly-announced publishing division “which aims to fund and support developers in creating cool games”.
Of course, Palworld’s first year has not been without its challenges.
“There were so many challenges, to be honest,” he tells me. “Pre-launch, we started gaining traction online, which was new for us and brought its own difficulties. Post-launch, we faced server problems, bug reporting issues, countless accusations… It was a lot to handle.
“While those issues haven’t entirely gone away, they’ve definitely become more manageable.”
Those accusations mostly came with a Pokémon-flavoured edge to them. Before the game was released in early access last January, many dubbed it ‘Pokémon with guns’ due to the familiar designs of some Palworld creatures and some in-game mechanics. Nintendo announced it was suing Pocketpair for infringement of “multiple” patents back in September, and it was later confirmed the lawsuit is targeting three patents in particular. As part of an update in December, Pocketpair subsequently removed the ability to summon creatures by throwing Pokéball-style Pal Spheres.
So, what has the team learned from the last 12 months? After all, no one – even Bucky – expected Palworld to take off quite as much as it did. As a reminder, Palworld became the first big mega-hit of 2024, surpassing 2m concurrent players on Steam last January. It was only the second game to ever achieve this, the other being PUBG.
“As a company, we’ve learned how to structure our processes better,” Bucky tells me. “People often forget that Pocketpair is quite a small team. The methods we’ve used for our previous games worked well, but Palworld put a spotlight on both our weaknesses and strengths. This year really brought the team together and made us more effective in our workflows.”
But, for Bucky personally, he now appreciates the “importance of asking for advice and help as soon as possible” adding: “There are so many incredibly knowledgeable people in this industry.”
If you’re playing Palworld, but feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all right now, be sure to check out our guides. Here’s one on Palworld Breeding Combos and how to breed Pals to get you started.
