Palworld Remains Buy-to-Play Despite 'Free-to-Play' Rumors

Palworld Not Changing to Free-to-Play (F2P) ModelPalworld DLC and Skins Being Considered to Support Development

"Regarding the Future of Palworld TL;DR – We are not changing our game’s business model, it will remain buy-to-play and not f2p or GaaS," the Palworld team announced in a statement on Twitter (X) a few days ago. This statement came following reports on developer Pocketpair discussing the game's future, revealing that it had considered shifting to a live service and F2P model among other prospects.

Pocketpair additionally clarified that they "are still discussing" the "best way forward" for Palworld, after a recently published interview with ASCII Japan revealed the devs' ideas on which direction the game could potentially take. "At that time, we were still considering the best way forward for Palworld to create a long-lasting game that continues to grow," further read their statement. "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."

The studio said it remains committed to make Palworld "the best game possible," additionally apologizing for any concern that have stemmed from the previous reports of Palworld shifting to a different business model. "We apologize for any concern this may have caused, and we hope this clarifies our position. Thank you for your continued support of Palworld," the studio concluded.

As reported on last week, Palworld CEO Takuro Mizobe discussed their future plans for Palworld in an interview with outlet ASCII Japan, but the studio has since clarified that the interview "was conducted several months ago." Additionally, Mizobe said in the aforementioned interview, "Of course, we will update [Palword] with new content," pledging more new Pals as well as raid bosses at the time. The studio mentioned in their recent statement on Twitter (X) that they "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."

Over onto other developments regarding the game, a PS5 version of Palworld was reportedly spotted in a list of title announcements set to be part of the upcoming Tokyo Game Show 2024 (TGS 2023) event taking place later this month. As noted by news site Gematsu, the list published by Japan’s Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA) shouldn't be treated as "by any means definitive" of potential announcements.