Release back in January, Palworld became one of this year's biggest surprise hits. The monster-collecting, action-adventure game sold eight million copies in its first six days of early access and by February, that total had surpassed 15 million.
Now nine months into its lifespan, there have been all sorts of conversations surrounding the game's business model and how developer Pocketpair intends to continue supporting and growing the game post-launch.
Last week, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe acknowledged that turning it into a live-service game would "extend its lifespan and make it more stable in terms of profitability." However, he acknowledged that "there would be many challenges involved in taking it down the live-service path.”
His comments were met with considerable backlash from players, especially given the negative perception surrounding live-service games of late. The backlash was noticeable enough to warrant an official comment from Pocketpair.
"TL;DR - We are not changing our game's business model, it will remain buy-to-play and not f2p or GaaS," the developer wrote on the official Palworld social media channel. Pocketpair explained that the interview with Mizobe was conducted months ago.
"At that time, we were still considering the best way forward for Palworld to create a long-lasting game that continues to grow," the developer continued. "We are still discussing this internally, as it is quite challenging to find the ideal path, but we have already decided that the F2P/GaaS approach is not suitable for us."
"Palworld was never designed with that model in mind, and it would require too much work to adapt the game at this point. Additionally, we are very aware that this just isn't what our players want, and we always put our players first," Pocketpair added.
While Palworld won't be going free to play or transforming into a traditional "games as a service," Pocketpair did confirm they are still considering character skins and DLC (downloadable content) as a way to generate revenue to continue supporting development. Check out the full statement from Pocketpair in the tweet below:
Palworld is currently available on Xbox and PC. There is speculation that the game will be officially annoucned for PlayStation at Tokyo Game Show this month.