3mo ago

Palworld faces the difficult choice of whether to become a live-service game or stay buy-to-play, PocketPair’s CEO says

automaton-media.com (UPDATE) Palworld faces the difficult choice of whether to become a live-service game or stay buy-to-play, PocketPair’s CEO says - AUTOMATON WEST

Palworld developer's CEO Takuro Mizobe talks about the possibility of the game switching to a live-service model.

Games @sh.itjust.works

automaton-media.com /en/news/palworld-faces-the-difficult-choice-of-whether-to-become-a-live-service-game-or-stay-buy-to-play-pocketpairs-ceo-says/

32 6

You're viewing a single thread.

45 comments

Is ~20k and dropping daily players enough to warrant a live service model? 🤔
- Didn't they make 10-100s millions of dollars on this? Pays a lot of salaries while you make new paid content.
  EDIT : They made at least 12 million sales on steam, and had 7 million players on Xbox, which may be Gamepass, but still makes them money.
  So at $30, that's 66million from steam minus 30% for steams cut, so they banked 44 million at least.
  They can pay 440 devs 100k for at least a year. I assume their team is a bit smaller than that, so they likely have years of runway. Linkedin lists size as between 50-200 in japan, so that likely means they are making $50-70k, and there are likely more than 100 devs. I would guess they have a 4 year runway from Steam sales, and maybe 1-2 year from Gamepass.
  They got some time to think.
  
  According to their careers page, they have about 60 employees. And, knowing japanese game dev salaries, a lot of those devs (excluding senior devs) probably make around 30-50k a year depending on seniority unless it's a unicorn company.
  
  Yeah...that changes the numbers. More like 10-20 years to do just about anything.
  Somehow the urgency just drains right out of this for me.
  
  Iirc they started paying their devs waaaay more after the game sold a ton.
  
  no line must go up, only up, up now and up tomorrow and the days after too. fire all the devs too, paying them makes line go down.
- Anyone know if The Finals counts as a "live service" game? It's free to play and I think it's fantastic - both the game and the fact it's free.
  I just don't play games enough to justify the huge asking prices anymore. The last games I paid for were COD MW2 and Cyberpunk and I doubt I'll ever drop $70+ for a game again, especially when there's games like splitgate and whatnot that are free (not that I ever tried the new one. lol)
  
  You could always become a patientgamer !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
  
  I would definitely classify The Finals as a live service. The way I see it, any game that is designed to be "never-ending", and have a constant stream of new content (free or paid) would fall under this category of game.
  I wouldn't say it's a requirement for all live service games, but I'd also say that anything that uses "seasonal" content models would also be considered a live service.
  
  Yes, it's a live service game. Most major free to play games are. Instead of selling you the game or selling adspace to advertisers, they sell you bits and pieces of the game like skins and such.

45 comments