Palworld developer Pocketpair announced on September 4 that Craftopia – its debut sandbox survival game from 2020 – will officially launch in 2027. The developers also released a sixth-anniversary mini-update today and outlined their plans for the game’s remaining development.
Originally released in Early Access in October 2020 via Steam, Craftopia is a multiplayer open-world survival action game featuring everything from hunting and farming, to hack-and-slash combat, building, and automation. A major update in October 2023 overhauled much of the experience, including the introduction of a seamless map. Alongside the game’s chaotic gameplay, which has historically embraced all manner of bugs and exploits, it now lets players explore and build across a vast open world.
With the game approaching its sixth anniversary in Early Access, Pocketpair has announced that Craftopia will finally reach its 1.0 release in 2027. In the announcement, the devs described the game as hugely important to Pocketpair’s history, saying that without Craftopia, the company, and arguably Palworld, would not exist in their current forms.
At the same time, Pocketpair acknowledged that communication regarding the game’s development has not always been sufficient. “In particular, since the release of Palworld, some Craftopia players have understandably felt that the game was receiving less attention,” they commented, while also apologizing and thanking fans for their continued support.
For Craftopia’s 1.0 release, Pocketpair says its priority is not simply to pack in as much new content as possible. Instead, the team wants to organize and refine the gameplay it has built up over the years while addressing any remaining issues. The goal is to make the game as enjoyable and polished as possible.
Pocketpair’s growth in recent years has also allowed it to dedicate more development resources to Craftopia, enabling the team to tackle longstanding technical challenges that were previously “extremely difficult” to resolve. Players can still expect new content to be added, however, with more details to be announced at a later date.
The devs also provided an update on Craftopia’s Xbox versions, whose development progress has differed from the Steam version. The Xbox Series X|S version is planned to reach 1.0 alongside the Steam version. However, Pocketpair has decided to end development of the Xbox One version after failing to achieve a level of performance and stability it could be satisfied with. As a result, the 1.0 release will not be coming to Xbox One, which the devs have apologized for.
Craftopia’s full release comes one year after Palworld, which entered Early Access much later but officially launched this July. As the open-world survival action game that helped lay the groundwork for Palworld, Craftopia clearly holds a special place in Pocketpair’s history. It will be interesting to see how far the team goes with it as the 1.0 release nears.
