"Slay the Spire 2 has taken over his life": Palworld CEO gets a telling off from staff after staying up "all night" to play the long-awaited follow-up to Mega Crit's influential deckbuilding roguelike
"Next time I'm confiscating his Steam Deck"
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Slay the Spire 2 – the long-awaited sequel to developer Mega Crit's beloved deckbuilding roguelike – is just as good as we all hoped, which is proving to be great news or awful news depending on who you ask over at Palworld studio Pocketpair.
Over the weekend, Slay the Spire 2 entered Steam's top 20 most-played games ever with over 573,000 concurrent players. One of those players was likely Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe, who has already been scolded for his love of the game.
Over the weekend, the Palworld chief shared a Slack exchange with Pocketpair's publishing manager, John 'Bucky' Buckley. If you're wondering what they could be talking about, Bucky has been kind enough to give you a glimpse.
"Yes, I scolded my ceo but in my defense…we had A LOT of work to do that day and instead he stayed up all night playing Slay the Spire 2," Bucky says. "Next time I'm confiscating his Steam Deck."
Did Bucky's warning work? No, of course not.
He came to the office after that and immediately set up shop as far away from everyone as he could…and continued playing.Slay the Spire 2 has taken over his life:sob: pic.twitter.com/7A0Xc5JgzeMarch 8, 2026
As per Bucky himself, Mizobe did turn up to the office for work, only to find a nice wee corner for himself to keep the deckbuilding roguelike momentum going. "Slay the Spire 2 has taken over his life."
Mind you, I doubt Bucky is truly surprised by it all. Last week, the chatty Palworld community lead said he was "genuinely surprised" by how many people on Twitter were shocked to see Slay the Spire 2 dominating the Steam charts.
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"This was never up for discussion," he said at the time. " It was written in the stars. Slay the Spire is an all-time masterpiece. The gamers have been activated."
Unfortunately, it would appear that Mizobe agrees.

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.
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