While Pocketpair continues to move towards the 1.0 release of Palworld, publishing head John Buckley has acknowledged that the studio will continue working on the game. However, major content updates won’t keep coming forever, he noted. In an interview with GamesRadar, Buckley spoke about other games that have seen long-term post-launch support, like No Man’s Sky. However, he doesn’t think Palworld will go the same route, with updates continuing even a decade after the original launch.
“A lot of our hardcore fans and players would love for Palworld to be this No Man’s Sky situation where it’s like a decade of continuous, massive updates,” he said. “But realistically, that’s probably not on the cards for Palworld, not only because of engine limitations, but also, it’s a survival crafting game. I think there’s only so many times you can add five levels, add 10 levels, until it gets to this massive bloat point.”
He also noted that offering long-time support to a game centered around progression systems is difficult for studios. Bringing up MMORPG World of Warcraft, Buckley pointed out the fact that it has seen a few stat squishes over the years, allowing the developers and players to find in-game numbers like health, damage, and stats more manageable and easier to parse. However, if Palworld wasn’t based around linear progression systems, No Man’s Sky-styled “forever” support could have been possible.
“Even World of Warcraft had that stat squish years and years ago,” he explained. “Palworld is linear progression. I think if Palworld didn’t have that progression, you could do it forever like No Man’s Sky. But it’s gonna have to stop at some point, and then we can think about what comes after, and that’s exciting for us.”
However, this doesn’t mean that Palworld’s 1.0 release will mark the end of major content drops either. Buckley even went as far as to say that a Palworld 2.0 is even possible in the future. However, it remains contingent on Pocketpair coming up with ideas that don’t feel “boring”.
“I wouldn’t rule out a Palworld 2.0,” he said. “It really depends on what we can do with the game at the moment, how we can expand it without it feeling boring. Not only boring, but how we can expand it while also being approachable.”
He went on to note that, at a certain point, post-launch support for Palworld will have to come to an end so that casual players don’t start feeling like the game is a chore. “That’s where it gets tricky with 2.0,” he explained. “And we get into the big debate of, do you continue to expand Palworld and find a way to mitigate those problems? Or do you start thinking about – I won’t say the word because I don’t want to speak it into existence – something beyond Palworld?”
However, ultimately, “100% of Pocketpair right now is working on Palworld 1.0”, according to Buckley. The monster-taming survival game is currently available as an Early Access game across PC, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out what the studio has to say about how Palworld 1.0 is shaping up.
