Disclaimer: Please read the entire article first, especially the concluding section. You can crucify me afterward if you want, especially for any mistakes I made in the article.
Recently, Palworld received its 1.0 update, officially exiting Early Access after about 2.5 years. The developer, Pocketpair, announced their intention to fully release the game last year and announced a date roughly one month before the full release.
While this release is not surprising and seems to be heavily celebrated based on the reviews and comments on various news announcements for the game, I'm personally a little upset. This is because Pocketpair is also the game developer of Craftopia, a game I naïvely pointed to as a potentially decent open world-esque alternative when discussing the game design issues of Genshin Impact. While some great open world games did fully release (or are at least near full release) later on, Craftopia has instead languished in Early Access for nearly 6 years.
Around when Palworld entered Early Access, I played Craftopia, then I played Palworld itself a few months later. While I had fun playing both games and saw their potential, I was ultimately frustrated and concerned by how much worse off the former game was despite how much longer it had been in development. Because I was aware of Pocketpair's history regarding how they handled their first game, Overdungeon, which I will explain in further detail later, I started to gather information about the company. The results of this research deepened my outrage, but I reasoned that Craftopia's development would surge forward by leaps and bounds with the new revenue from Palworld's success. Therefore, I shelved what I learned in the form of an article draft on this blog and hoped I'd never have to make use of the information.
Unfortunately, Palworld has now fully released before Craftopia has even left the alpha state of development by the developer's own admission. Furthermore, Pocketpair has intentions to release more games and while they definitely have the staff to support such projects, it's unusual and concerning that the future of their second oldest game remains uncertain.
I believe Pocketpair's game development practices are uniquely questionable to the point that more people should scrutinize and criticize them. This article will
attempt to accomplish that by laying out the facts I've gathered along with my interpretations of that evidence. I will then address counterpoints made by fans, including potential future ones, and explain why Pocketpair's practices are problematic, particularly in the broader sense of affecting the gaming industry as a whole.