Legal battles with Nintendo aside, open-world survival game Palworld has enjoyed tons of success since it was launched back in January 2024 into early access. After more than two years of updates, it’s been confirmed it’ll hit 1.0 this Friday, 10th July. Forget about a price increase though.
Traditionally, early access games raise their price tags when they’re fully developed in order to reflect the fact they’re complete products after a period of development alongside early players. At the same time, the lower buy-in price – which gets you the full game once it’s time for the full launch – entices curious gamers. For the most part, it’s a deal that works.
Developer Pocketpair is choosing to keep the game at $29.99 / £24.99 “as a small way of saying thank you”, however, and it sounds like it’s not a temporary decision. The welcome announcement arrived alongside confirmation Palworld has now passed 40m players since January 2024, which the developer team celebrated with a new recap video that teases what comes next too.
It must be noted 40m unique players don’t translate into 40m units sold, as Palworld launched straight into Xbox and PC Game Pass in January 2024, where it became one of the service’s top third-party releases. On 10th July, Game Pass subscribers will get to enjoy its 1.0 update too.
By September 2025, Palworld had actually sold over 25m copies. It’s unclear what the total number is at the time of writing, but back in March 2024, Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe said the game’s initial success was “too big for a studio with our size to handle” while expressing his desire to keep the studio small and agile. The company, however, now has around 110 workers as it’s also expanded its publishing operations.
In Palworld, players fight, farm, build, and work alongside creatures called Pals (not Pokémon) in an open world which can be explored and exploited alone or online. Despite the discussions over its similarities to Nintendo and The Pokémon Company’s more family-friendly IP, the game has undoubtedly become a global phenomenon, with an all-time peak around its debut of more than 2m players concurrently online on Steam alone.
