The expense of maintaining the game’s servers has been split between Chujo Hiroto, a network engineer, and Takuro Mizobe, CEO of Palworld. The amount was disclosed by the two in two humorous social media posts: ¥70 million, or over $500k USD. Palworld has captured the attention of gamers worldwide, with 19 million downloads sold on Steam and Xbox. and doing so while shattering several records. This is a significant accomplishment for an independent game in early access. However, a victory like this is not inexpensive.
Palworld, an indie survival game that collects monsters, has an astounding 19 million players. However, its developer is paying a high price for its incredible success. CEO of Pocketpair Takuro Mizobe posted that Palworld expects its February server expenditures to exceed 70 million yen. That’s more than $475,000 in USD.
Pocketpair’s CEO, Takuro Mizobe joked! (Translated from Japanese)
“Wait, maybe we’ll go bankrupt from server fees?”
He continued,
I wouldn’t worry excessively. According to Pocketpair, Palworld has been sold on Steam for roughly 12 million copies. Palworld’s total income to date, at $30 per unit, is $360 million, not including Xbox sales (which are included in Game Pass).
Steam decreases revenue cut
After a specific amount, Steam’s revenue cut decreases from 30% to 20%, but let’s simply assume that Steam receives a flat 30% of that $360 million for the purposes of this argument. Even yet, Pocketpair has $252 million left over before costs. That amount makes $6 million in annual server expenditures not seem nearly so unaffordable.
Chujo Hiroto, a network engineer at Palworld, responded to Mizobe’s message in English.
“We have created servers without consideration to cost in accordance with the directive to never allow the service to go down under any circumstances. We’ll be working tirelessly to make sure every gamer has the best possible experience! $478,00”.
Palworld will certainly not be able to sustain sales of over 12 million copies per month, and unlike online games that use premium cosmetics and recurring revenue streams like battle passes to offset their expensive maintenance and development expenses, Palworld does not yet have microtransactions.
Palworld running successfully
Since releasing less than two weeks ago, Palworld’s insanely popular launch has achieved yet another milestone, according to creator Pocketpair. The game has now amassed over 19 million users worldwide. The company vows to prioritize issue fixes and announced the news on its official X/Twitter account, breaking down the data. With its $29.99 Pokémon-like experience on Steam, Palworld has amassed a staggering 12 million gamers. The remaining 7 million gamers are from Xbox, where the concept was a huge hit with Xbox Game Pass.
Palworld is quickly approaching 20 million players, but despite a successful debut, there have been some problems. Fans have been accusing one other of plagiarism on social media as the number of players has increased since the January 19 Early Access launch, claiming that some of the creatures have an uncanny similarity to monsters from the Pokémon games.
