Palworld's early access release is "about 60% complete," but its devs thought adding PvP would be a lot easier

Palworld's early access release is "about 60% complete," according to its developer - who underestimated how easy it would be to implement a PvP mode.

In an interview with Automaton, PocketPair's CEO Takuro Mizobe discussed the game's Pokemon comparisons and revealed the studio's plans for Palworld. When asked to describe the game's current state in terms of progress, Mizobe revealed: "I think all the basic functions are set, so perhaps about 60% complete?" Before revealing that "the next phase is all about further perfecting the game."

The "next phase" will see the team implementing PvP, new game functions, and whatever else comes from players' reactions to the survival game. One thing the people at PocketPair didn't quite expect is how difficult it would be to add a PvP mode to the game in its current state.

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"Trying to make PvP and PvE work with each other means developing a game with significant limitations in terms of game design," Mizobe explained. "In a multiplayer PvE game, you can easily add a singleplayer mode without making big changes to the game’s system. But for PvP, if you think of it as 'It’s just players beating each other up, it should be simple,' and try to implement it without much thought, you’re going to have a hard time."

Mizobe went on to admit that he and the other developers "made the mistake of thinking we can 'just casually add PvP later on." It wasn't until the team was in the middle of trying to do it that they realized how "problematic" it would end up being. "From that point on, we rushed to make last-minute adjustments so that nothing goes against the game design’s basic premises."

Although a PvP mode is on the cards for Palworld, the PocketPair's CEO has said: "Even now, some inconsistencies remain in the game design, and we have to resolve them if we want a PvP mode release."

Palworld has been an incredible success for PocketPair, not only did it gain 200,000 concurrent PC players less than 24 hours after its launch, but it's now topped a huge Counter-Strike 2 Steam milestone by gaining over 1.8 million concurrent players.

About to give the survival game a go yourself? Take a look at our Palworld type chart guide before you get started.

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.