As developer Pocketpair continues its work on the long-awaited 1.0 update for Palworld, the studio’s head of communications and publishing, John Buckley, has asked fans of the game to wait for a bit longer. While he acknowledged that many players have been eagerly waiting for the studio to announce a release date for Palworld 1.0, he noted that the game is “still in the oven.”
“Last September, we posted a video explaining that the entire team’s focus was on 1.0 and that we’d be going quiet until it’s ready,” he wrote on social media platform X. “I know you gamers want 1.0 ASAP, but it’s still in the oven!” Buckley wrote this message as a public response to a DM he got asking him, “Are you guys even working on Palworld anymore? Where is 1.0, bro?!” In replies to the post, Buckley went on to say that, “We’ll crack the oven open a little when it’s nearly done so you’ll smell it.”
On the subject of staying quiet about the update until the studio is ready to share, Buckley noted that players levelled similar criticisms against Pocketpair when it came to updates like Feybreak.
“It’s great how enthusiastic everyone is for 1.0, but when it comes to how to actually market and promote our game…I think we have a pretty good grasp on what to do,” he wrote.
The fact that Palworld‘s 1.0 update is taking so long and the studio isn’t quite ready to announce a release date should come as no surprise, since the update is slated to bring in a lot of new content to the game. During GDC 2026 last month, Buckley had spoken about how it will include “something for everyone.”
“Survival crafting is a very unique genre. It’s a very Steam genre, for all its woes and highs,” he said. “There’s so many incredible, incredible survival crafting games, but I think every survival crafting gamer has their like ideal version of what survival crafting should be, and we hope Palworld 1.0 will be that kind of something for everyone, lose yourself in this world, survival crafting game.” He went on to say that, “Palworld is going to be the survival crafting game everyone always wanted.”
As for more details about what 1.0 might include, he went on to say that “It’s still quite top secret.”
“There’s gonna be things that surprise people. I think people will be shocked by what we’ve been able to achieve for 1.0. 1.0 is going to fall at kind of a weird point for players. You can jump into 1.0 with your existing character if you want to. We’re not force wiping anyone. You can jump in. But we are going to kind of softly recommend you start from scratch, because kind of everything is going to change from the beginning to the end – It’s all going to change.”
On the subject of whether or not Palworld will continue to get new content updates after its 1.0 release, Buckley had previously brought up a comparison with No Man’s Sky, noting that Pocketpair isn’t likely to go the same route.
“A lot of our hardcore fans and players would love for Palworld to be this No Man’s Sky situation where it’s like a decade of continuous, massive updates,” he said. “But realistically, that’s probably not on the cards for Palworld, not only because of engine limitations, but also, it’s a survival crafting game. I think there’s only so many times you can add five levels, add 10 levels, until it gets to this massive bloat point.”
In the meantime, Palworld continues to be available on PC, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in its Early Access form.
