Palworld developer Pocketpair launched a new publishing business last week, following the gargantuan success of its Pokémon-inspired survival game. The response was, shall we say, enthusiastic, with Pocketpair’s comms director and publishing manager John Buckley stating he received 1,500 LinkedIn requests within 24 hours.
Now, one week after getting into the publishing business, Pocketpair has revealed the response goes far beyond LinkedIn requests. Posting on X (via GamesRadar) the official Pocketpair Publishing account explained it had received “400 emails, 150 pitches [and] 2000+ Linkedin requests” in the seven days since opening up to finance third-party titles. “We are blown away by the interest we have received from YOU, the developers,” the post continued, assuring that “we’re doing our best to review each request and pitch.”
Pocketpair already has one third-party project signed, a new game from Tales of Kenzera: Zau developer Surgent Studios. Founded by actor Abubakar Salim, Surgent’s new project is apparently a horror game, though no further details have been released at this time. The publisher may also have closed deals on two other games. Although this isn’t confirmed, it was indicated by an image posted by Buckley in the wake of his LinkedIn revelations. Drawn using Buckley’s “amazing MS Paint skills” to show how Pocketpair’s financial independence works, the image shows three red circles beneath the heading “Pocketpair publishing”. One of these is “Surgent game” while the others are simply lines of question marks. As for the rest of those pitches, Pocketpair said it is “determined to help as many great games get made as possible” though it stressed “we cannot help everyone”.
The flood of pitches Pocketpair received reflects the growing challenge of acquiring funding for games experienced by indie studios. This topic broke into public discussion following BioWare’s recent spate of layoffs, with numerous game developers responding to the general idea that those developers should go and form their own companies.
On Bluesky, UK developer Simon Roth, who directed the colony sim Maia and more recently worked on Trash Goblin, stated the latter “ticked the box for pretty much everything publishers are looking for. An experienced team, with a polished prototype of a new twist in a popular genre.” Yet despite this “76 publishers turned it down”. In the same thread, Dishonored 2 and former Bloodlines 2 narrative designer Cara Ellison noted “Everyone I spoke to about our game [the stealth-action card game Sleight of Hand] also told us we were getting signed on the spot,” adding that “one playtested our game internally, it got 10s across the board, they still didn’t sign us”.
Pocketpair’s enthusiasm around publishing, therefore, seems to be something of an oasis in a desert. Even so, it’ll be interesting to see how many of those 150 pitches actually receive the backing they need.