Palworld publishing boss thinks "we're a few years away" from a AAA survival crafting game, and he was "super excited" for the one Blizzard canceled

Palworld's head of publishing and communications, John Buckley, otherwise known as Bucky online, thinks AAA companies will probably borrow more ideas from survival crafting games very soon and reckons it's about time before one of them tries to make another AAA survival game again.

"I think there's an exciting future in survival crafting, and I think we're going to see more and more people start to kind of borrow elements from it," Buckley says in an interview with GamesRadar+ at GDC 2026. "And I think we're a few years away from someone attempting a AAA survival crafting game. I think it's coming."

No surprise, there - survival crafting games have long been a massive subgenre on PC and, sometimes, beyond, but big publishers have rarely tried their hand at making ones with a sizable budget.

"It's hard to imagine who would do it, but I think someone's gonna try," Buckley continues. Blizzard Entertainment notably took a stab at developing a fantasy survival game codenamed Odyssey, but Microsoft and Activision Blizzard canceled it under an avalanche of layoffs across both companies. At the time, Microsoft exec Matt Booty said some Odyssey developers were being shifted onto other projects.

"Yeah, that was the one everyone - I was super excited for that," Buckley adds. "I mean, we'll see. I think someone's gonna attempt it. I don't know how it's gonna work out. I think someone will attempt a big one. "

"We have no desire to be a media empire," says Palworld publishing head, but Pocketpair would be stupid to let the survival game die out