Developer Pocket Pair has responded to a recently published interview which led to fan concern Palworld would change to a free-to-play and/or live-service model.

“We are not changing our game’s business model, it will remain buy-to-play and not free-to-play or games-as-a-service,” Pocket Pair said. “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.”

The interview was hosted by Japanese outlet ASCII Japan and translated by Automaton Media, leading to its title and translation suggesting they were considering whether or not to go live-service / free-to-play, or remain a premium and paid game.

The translated article was posted onto the Palworld subreddit and since many online users don’t actually read things it spiraled out of control with speculation. This lead to Pocket Pair issuing the above statement confirming they are not considering free-to-play or live-service as a model.

It’s possible from the time the interview was actually held to when it was published Pocket Pair decided internally on the future of the game. The uproar from the Reddit response likely prompted them to go public with their decision on the future for Palworld.

Palworld was released back in January 2024 for Windows PC (via Steam and the Microsoft Store), Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The game is also on Xbox Game Pass.

Here’s the full word from Pocket Pair:

We are not changing our game’s business model, it will remain buy-to-play and not free-to-play or games-as-a-service. 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.

In fact, this interview was conducted several 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. 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.

We are still considering skins and DLC for Palworld in future as a means to support development, but we will discuss this with you all again as we get closer to that point. For now, our priority remains making Palworld the best game possible.

We apologize for any concern this may have caused, and we hope this clarifies our position. Thank you for your continued support of Palworld.