Pocketpair Publishing Uses ‘Palworld’ Success To Support Indies With Fair Deals: “Survive From Sale One Onwards”
A year on from its launch, Pocketpair Publishing’s John Buckley has shared how they can pay the success of Palworld forward to other indies. They can offer more fair publishing terms that allow developers to “survive from sale one onwards.”
Pocketpair Publishing launched in January last year and saw a deluge of 150 pitches, numerous emails, and LinkedIn messages. A year on, Head of Publishing and Communication John Buckley spoke to Christopher Dring of The Game Business about how things have been going.
Buckley shared how the moment their website opened, they got a game they wanted to sign right away – MythicOwl’s Truckful. What made their pitch stand out was how they focused on the game and their budget, clearly showing they wanted to make the game rather than filling their presentation with fluff.
MythicOwl/Pocketpair Publishing
“The Truckful pitch came along, literally every single slide was about the game. It was, we need the money for this and this and this, and month one, month two, month three… It was down to the exact cent. And before you even meet these guys, you instantly feel they really want to make this game,” Buckley shared.
“They’ve gone to the lengths to show exactly what they need. It’s hard to say no to something like that.”
Palworld’s meteoric success led to plenty of attention from gamers, the industry, but also those throwing allegations of plagiarism, AI-generated work, and, of course, the patent lawsuit from Nintendo. The developers soldiered on, and their continuing success – “still generating tens of millions of dollars” per Dring – is what enabled them to help others.
“Pocketpair has struggled for many years. We’ve shipped games that were moderately successful, which just about funded the next thing. We’re no stranger to suffering, and trying to get by by yourself,” Buckley admitted.
“Shortly after Palworld released, a lot of people reached out to us unsolicited, saying, ‘Hey, I’m working on this game’. And we thought, is there any reason we’d get involved?” Buckley recounted. “We don’t have the resources to really act as a publisher. All of our games have basically been self-published, right? So that entire side of the industry is relatively alien to us.”
“And what surprised us the most was the conditions that are normalized now in the indie publishing world.”
“You’re meeting with these four or five-man teams who are looking for what is relatively not a lot of money. And they are very used to just giving up all of their revenue for one year. We just couldn’t believe it. You want to make this thing that you are totally in love with, and the price you have to pay is someone else taking all your money for years and years and years,” Buckley denounced.
“We realized, we’re in a position where we’re not wanting for anything at the moment. We can afford to give indies the money they need and not take these huge revenue share agreements.” Buckley championed that Pocketpair do “much fairer deals that let these developers survive from sale one onwards, rather than from sale 50,000 or whatever.”
Pocketpair Publishing’s first third-party title was horror game Dead Take from Surgent Studios, and Buckley shared how that helped teach them how to publish games. “It was a lot of fun [to work on]. We learned that we can try and be as hands off as possible, but there’s always going to have to be some level of oversight.”
“Our dream was: ‘Here’s the money, good luck’. But of course, there’ll always come a time when we need to jump in a bit, offer some advice and stuff like that. But it was a really positive experience. We hope Surgent feel good about it, too. It shipped on time, it came out well, and the players seemed really happy,” Buckley praised.
Buckley didn’t oversell Pocketpair Publishing, admitting they don’t offer many services, and the team is two people – one of them being himself. While hoping to expand the team, they currently offer two possible agreements: funding with “a small revenue share” until their costs are recouped, or the same funding but with Pocketpair in charge of the game for Asian region releases.
“We’re based in Japan and our games have been very successful in Asia, so we feel very confident in our Asian marketing, PR, and distribution abilities. A lot of Western devs don’t have this luxury,” Buckley crowed. “We are, at the moment, using the Palworld team.”
“If you join Pocketpair Publishing, and you want to sell your game in Asia, it’s the Palworld guys that are helping you.”
Buckley confessed the arrangements were more akin to what an investor would do. “In the beginning, a lot of people said, ‘you should call it Pocketpair Investments’. But a lot of game investments come with equity deals, whereas we don’t do that. We literally just fund the game. We don’t buy out any of the company. We don’t take any of the IPs. We really are hands-off.”
Likewise, Pocketpair Publishing doesn’t have the “authority to make changes,” but provides feedback instead. “All we can do is say, ‘Hey, this looks great. You’re going in the right direction’. Or, ‘Have you considered this instead?’ But ultimately, if our developers say, ‘we’re going to go this way’, then so be it. It’s their vision,” Buckley assures.
Buckley reiterated that all the games they published shared developers who were enthusiastic to make their game. “They’re all quite small. None of these are huge, $10 million games. It’s nothing like that. They’re little games made by people who really want to make a game comfortably, in their own way, at their own pace, without being told what to do. That, I guess, is what a Pocketpair Publishing game is.”
This prompted Dring to ask if they would sign on a $10 million game. “We’ve been pitched games that are in the thousands of dollars, like student games, and we’ve been pitched games touching the nine-figure range. I would never say never. We don’t really have any set budgets, because we’re quite fortunate. We just haven’t found one that speaks to us yet,” Buckley admitted.
“We’ve spoken to a few that seem promising and we will likely see them at some big game show over the next couple of years, but they just didn’t really click with us. We don’t want to just give money for the sake of giving money. We obviously need to feel that there’s something special behind it. So, at the moment, no. But ask me again next year and maybe we’ll have signed something,” Buckley teased.
Buckley concluded what Pocketpair Publishing’s goals are for now. “Success for us is that we just keep funding games. The reality is that as long as Pocketpair is successful, Pocketpair Publishing will continue to operate as we are. I don’t see a situation where we stop for the sake of stopping, even if these six/seven games all crash and burn.”
“I’m sure we’re just going to keep signing more, and helping people find the courage to keep making games. Of course, if one of these games is a mega hit and sells 25 million, I won’t complain.”
NEXT: Former Capcom Designer Asks Players Not To Support ‘Palworld’ Amid Legal Battle With Nintendo
