Palworld developer 'blown away' by the response to its new publishing arm, which has received 150 game pitches just one week after opening

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".

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".

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.