Indie studio Pocketpair shared how the global success of Palworld unfolded at the GDC 2025 developer conference.
During his presentation, John Buckley, the Communication Director and Head of Publishing at Pocketpair, stated that Palworld was initially aimed primarily at the Japanese audience. However, the studio soon realized that they had a potential hit on their hands.
One year after its announcement, Palworld garnered over a million wishlists, and in 2023 it became the third-most-listed unreleased game on Steam by this metric. “People constantly ask us: ‘What’s the reason? How did you manage to attract so much attention?’ But we don’t know. If we knew, we would replicate this success, but we have no idea what happened.”
Soon after its release, Palworld surpassed 2.1 million concurrent users on Steam. Yet Buckley prefers not to dwell on this unprecedented success: “In the first week, we reached a disgustingly large number [of players] that makes me feel sick.”
He also commented on the lawsuit from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. The accusations of patent infringement came as a shock to the studio—no one expected the lawsuit to be viewed from this angle. According to Buckley, Pocketpair is still considering its next steps.
The success of Palworld was accompanied by a considerable amount of stress and pressure. However, Buckley is proud of the team's cohesion: “I think many companies could have collapsed under threats, pressure, and negative reactions, but we managed to keep all our employees.”