"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

Pocketpair isn't trying to turn Palworld into a "media empire," according to the company's head of publishing and communications John 'Bucky' Buckley. All of its fledgling spinoffs are simply a product of fan demand.

In an interview with GamesRadar+ at GDC 2026, Buckley called out the common misconception that Pocketpair are "trying to turn Palworld into this big, big, big, big, big, big thing." Bigger than it already is, he means. To Buckley, "it's more so that we're just kind of doing what our players are asking us to do."

Upcoming farming sim spinoff Palworld: Palfarm was born because there was apparently a huge portion of the game's "absurdly large community" who were asking for a cozier way to interact with the survival game's gun-carrying creatures, for example. "We can't do that in Palworld. There's no way to really make this work. Palfarm came from that, right? That's where it came from," Buckley explains.

Cursed dating sim Palworld: More Than Just Pals came about in much the same way. "I won't talk much about it but there is, again, a huge community who wants something like that, and that's why we kind of spun that up," he laughs, before repeating the same sentiment for Palworld's upcoming trading card game and mobile spinoff.

"It's gonna make people happy. And that's, at the end of the day, all Pocketpair wants to do is just make its fans happy, right? Same with the phone game, same with all the things we're working on," Buckley goes on. "Personally, I don't think Palworld is going to be like this media empire, and we have no desire to be a media empire. But I think we can expect more kind of fun little Palworld stuff. And maybe, you know, if someone wants to, maybe someone else can take a stab at it at some point."

Buckley elsewhere expressed that Pocketpair is more than happy for outside developers to pitch Palworld-related projects, as long as they make some amount of sense in the game's world and aren't just Palworld: Balatro or Palworld: Expedition 33.

"Apologies, Palworld gamers," but Pocketpair communications lead says an underwater level will never happen: "You're pushing the game to its absolute limits"