Palworld's developer Pocketpair, not being slowed down by Nintendo's lawsuit, has gone and opened a publishing arm. Pocketpair Publishing, which already has a horror game made by Surgent Studios in the works, is up, running, and taking inquiries.
The studio's publishing manager and communications director, who goes by Bucky, recently posted to X that things were going well. Maybe a little too well—in around 15 hours, the poor blighter was swarmed with over 1,500 LinkedIn notifications and 68 email inquiries. "My inboxes were 0 before then… I think I might have underestimated how much interest there would be." I only dread to think what his inbox looks like now that small-time hopefuls have had a whole weekend to rustle up their elevator pitches.
Bucky seems to be taking it in stride, though—when asked by one commenter whether Pocketpair would get all tyrannical about its creative control, he responds: "We give you money. You make game." Simple as. He then adds: "We’re giving devs the financial freedom to make games they want so they DON’T have to get wrapped up with stinky rule makers and bullies."
In fact, most of his time on socials seems to be dedicated to clearing up misunderstandings about the studio's structure. In a separate post, he breaks out the MS Paint to reassure people that any partnerships with Sony are just to help market physical merchandise—Pocketpair is still in charge of its own destiny.
A lot of people don't seem to understand that when we say "Pocketpair is 100% independent" we really do mean there are no other fingers in this pie👼So, using my amazing MS Paint skills, hopefully, this clears things up a bit. We like doing things our way. 100% Pocketpair! pic.twitter.com/YLqYKgnCu8January 27, 2025
It's not a position I envy, at any rate. Opening the floodgates to the general public and sorting through the grey goo of web3 hypotheticals and AI-generated games (sometimes with equally AI-generated pitches) is a great way to make your emails unusable. Back when Vampire Survivor developer Poncle opened up a similar project, it had to cross such games off the menu from the get-go.
Pocketpair's form has no such forbiddances, and, look—maybe it's just trying to keep an open mind, and bless it for doing so, but I can't help but fret like an overprotective helicopter parent about an imagined sea of blockchain pitches which, being frank, don't really seem to be what the studio's going for when it says it wants to "find fun games."
This anxiety might just be because the project itself seems really worthwhile, honestly. I like a good indie, and I'm pleased as punch to see some 'indie' studios, such as Larian—yes, it's still technically independent—growing big enough to easily throw their weight around with the big boys, who are long overdue some competition. This pleasing trend of small-scale studios getting thrown a bunch of cash from unexpected successes and turning that moolah into funding strikes me as an innate good, and I'd like to see it continue.
