By Ed Nightingale

Copyright eurogamer

Pocketpair is aiming for a Palworld 1.0 release in 2026, following the game’s launch in early access at the start of 2024.

In a video update, Pocketpair revealed it’s working on big fixes and clean-up of the game ahead of a full release next year, though there’s still more content planned for the rest of 2025.

Since its initial launch, Palworld has become a remarkable success: it sold 6m copies in just four days, and has the third highest concurrent player count on Steam ever at over 2.1 million players. In that time, though, the company has been rocked by an ongoing lawsuit with Nintendo and has made changes to gameplay despite disputing claims of infringement.

Pocketpair has shipped five major updates to Palworld, each adding new elements to gameplay like raids, new environments, and cross-play with other platforms.

“Now we’ve reach a crossroads and need to decide what comes next,” explained Palworld communications director Bucky in this video update. “While we have a lot of ideas for where we want to take Palworld, we also need to start thinking about Palworld 1.0.

“Beyond just adding new content, there’s a lot of cleanup that needs to be done before Palworld can exit Early Access. It’s no secret that Palworld has a lot of quirks and jank and we want to take the time to properly address those before releasing the game.”

That’s why the studio will be a little quieter until the 1.0 release, although a winter update is still planned – just smaller than last year’s.

What’s more, Pocketpair now has a publishing arm and is working on multiple projects. It’s already released Dead Take with Abubakar Salim’s Surgent Studios this year, with more to come.

Pocketpair itself is also working on new projects, though the majority of its efforts remain on Palworld leading to that 1.0 release.

Nintendo, meanwhile, is increasing its catalogue of patents. Earlier this month, a new patent was granted that could have implications across the games industry – but is it enforceable?

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