Palworld devs want to remain a small studio: “triple-A games are not for us” 

PocketPair, the indie developer behind 2024’s best-seller Palworld, have declared that they intend to remain independent and maintain their relatively small scale. The company’s CEO Takuro Mizobe revealed this sentiment in an interview with Bloomberg. 

Before starting work on Palworld, a hit title with a $30 price tag, PocketPair was a company with less than 10 employees. Mizobe had described the Palworld team’s growth in the following way for us in a past interview: “initially, there were only 3-4 members on the team. Furthermore, they were all newly hired employees, so Palworld basically started out with an almost completely different development team to that of Craftopia. Then, a year later, we had about ten people on board. In two years, the team suddenly grew to 20 to 30 people, and in the third year, I added another 10 to 20 new members.” 

While growing to keep up with Palworld’s ambitious scale, the company remained comparatively small, and while PocketPair is avidly searching for new talent, it seems that they have no plans to “go big” any time soon. Speaking for Bloomberg, Takuro Mizobe revealed that, while the company would be open to consider partnership or acquisition offers, they intend to remain a small studio: “We are and will remain a small studio.” He also comments on his goals for the company’s future projects, saying, “I want to make multiple small games. Big-budget triple-A games are not for us.” 

Mizobe considers small studios to be “pioneers in game design,” and this stance seems to match the current gaming community’s climate too, as players grow disillusioned with AAA titles. As a small-scale game with a modest budget, Palworld was able to take many risks, unconstrained by past formulas or attempts to compromise with too wide an audience, which very likely contributed to it causing such a sensation among players. While Mizobe does not seem confident in producing another hit as big as Palworld, his stance on game development seems to be a good sign that the company does not risk getting stuck in a comfort zone.