Palworld absolutely blew up when it was released back in 2024. The 'Pokemon with guns' (a branding the devs have tried to escape from) game was so successful that the game's developer, Pocketpair, has launched its own publishing branch. The announcement of this new publisher clearly made an impact, as it had received 150 pitches within one week of its announcement. However, Palworld's communications director and publishing manager, John 'Bucky' Buckley, revealed that the studio had received pitches way earlier than that.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ at GDC 2025, Buckley told us, "No one has money at the moment. Minutes, that's not even a joke; minutes after Palworld released and that started to happen, people were sending us pitches even though we weren't a publisher." He added, "I think there was just this desperate, you know, 'we need money' that's going on right now, and a lot of people contacted us." While an indie studio seeking funding (like Surgent Studios, who is the first developer releasing a game under Pocketpair) isn't surprising, Buckley says it wasn't just small teams reaching out. "To our surprise, it wasn't just little two-man teams or something. Some really big names contacted us, you know, AAA, AA, premium indies, all these contacts."
