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Palworld, developed by Pocketpair, is one of the best-selling games of 2024. Now, the indie developer is making claims it will remain a small independent studio, regardless of how well its games sell. When Palworld was released, it broke sales records and set new ones, and the runaway success of Palworld was almost too much for Pocketpair to handle.
According to Pocketpair CEO, Takuro Mizobe, the company had roughly 10 employees when work started on Palworld. As development continued, the team kept growing. Despite this, Pocketpair is still a small indie studio, and it sounds like it wants to remain so for the foreseeable future.
Palworld developer wants to remain a small indie studio
Speaking to Bloomberg on March 14, Mizobe said he wants to keep Pocketpair small. “We are and will remain a small studio,” he said. “I want to make multiple small games. Big-budget triple-A games are not for us.” Due to the continued success of the game, the question of the studio being bought by a larger company was always going to come up.
Mizobe said: “Games are most fun when playing with friends”, and went on to say “A game without a multiplayer mode just doesn’t feel right in the era we live in today”. It’s thanks to Pocketpair’s status as an indie studio that it was able to take more risks when making Palworld. Keeping studios independent of larger companies allows room for indies to be the ‘pioneers of game design’, as Mizobe went on to say.
Whatever Pocketpair is doing, obviously works. When Palworld launched, it broke multiple records and flew to the top of the Steam best-seller list. It also broke records for concurrent players, dethroning the likes of Modern Warfare 3 in a matter of hours after it launched.
For those not in the loop, Palworld is a survival game that is billed as Pokemon with guns. It seems the game’s going to remain popular for a while yet, and the studio has several updates planned for the game to bring in new content. In the meantime, check out our Palworld beginner’s guide – 7 tips and tricks to survive on Palpagos Island or our guide to Palworld Best mining Pals – how to dig up stone quickly.
