In an interview with Famitsu, Pocketpair developers working on Palworld discussed issues regarding the heavy server load. Future plans for the game include a better server to allow for more players, as well as cross-platform play. [Thanks, Famitsu!]
The interview starts with a brief summary of how Pocketpair only has a small team and how the game reached significant popularity shortly after launch. The developers reminisce on how they didn’t expect how big the game would get and how they were obliviously happy about it. Once the game actually came out though, things with the network weren’t working as well as they anticipated. With so many people playing at once, issues like the multiplayer mode freezing plagued the server. They spent a lot of time dealing with network problems.
The Famitsu interview then brought up how CEO Takurou Mizobe posted a half-joking Tweet in February 2024 that server costs would bankrupt the company. At the time, this was because the server cost for February was 70,530,000 JPY, or $480,499.75. Pocketpair explained that most of that money was data costs. The more players connect to the server, the higher the data costs. Pocketpair plans on optimizing the server so that it won’t cost as much in the future. This will also help them implement cross-platform play in the future.
Finally, the interview included a spot where the developers could talk about what they’re most proud of. They stated that they’re most happy with the multi-player system. Relatively speaking, the servers were very stable at launch and the lobby is easy to navigate. All of the information is right there on one screen, which is very rare for Japanese titles.
More information on cross-platform play will appear in the future. Palworld is readily available on the Xbox Series X, Xbox One, macOS, and Windows PC.
Published: Aug 13, 2024 07:30 pm