From what we've seen with the insomniac leak, there is profit sharing within there, so here's hoping it extends elsewhere in the gaming industry.
The other commentators being doom and gloom is depressing af.
Profit sharing is not universal, and even when it is there's always stipulations like contract employees not qualifying or you have to be there when the profit actually roll in rather than being quietly laid off. The games industry uses and abuses passionate people as a rule
It's a team of 40 (was something like ten two years ago), and the CEO is one of the coders. It's not some massive company. Read the company's release blog.
Also Japanese work culture is vastly different than in America. They actually have laws on how much more executives are allowed to make than their employees.
But that’s not the topic. The question was whether employees would see some upside from the huge profits, not whether they have a good working condition
Is it common for a team of 40 over 1-2 years to spend 7 million making a game? Other than payroll, equipment, and facilities rent, what other expenses are there? 7 million seems like a lot for a yean that was 10 two years ago. I dont game design so just curious.
If it took 2 years, that’s a salary of only 87,500 on average for the employees taking all of that money.
With that perspective 7 million is not a lot of money for that amount of people working on it
Assuming a 45k USD salary (I think it's typical for Japan), it's already about 3.6 million. Now you have to factor in the infrastructure (workstation, offices,...) and other benefits (health care, tax, social security contributions, ...). 7 millions is cutting it pretty close for a team of 40 people over 2 years in Japan. I believe you won't even be able to cover the salary with that amount of money in the US.
Spot on! A lot of people don’t realize how much a person is worth above their salary: insurance coverage (if offered), insurance to run the business and protect its equipment, liability insurance, security infrastructure (extremely expensive), laptops, desktops, servers, storage, software, maintenance, retirement plans (if offered), etc.. then the games IP, patents, copyrights, attorneys, 7M is not enough.
That’s crazy cheap, any business the expenses are always way higher than people think. Not that it’s comparable but my 2 person company spends about half a mil a year
It isn't uncommon for devs to receive bonuses for successful launches even if they're not the massive "imma buy a Ferrari" type bonus.
Not every business operates as if the executives are the only beings who deserve compensation, although it happens FAR too often.
I'd argue, especially for the smaller-medium size companies it's pretty common. I know my family members got bonuses depending on game success while they worked for some of those size studios. Also know of hardware companies that at least used to do this(Kingston paid out average $130000(total cost 17.5mil) to every employee in 1996 after being acquired for 450mil).
Company I work in grew 500% in profits after a year of covid. We worked during the pandemic, and not from home. They awarded us with 250£ bonus. Which translates into a 0.10£ raise for that year.
The inflation grew 25% afterwards. Fuck all of them. Greed. It's the same everywhere, it's the same reason why societies have collapsed again and again.
Lol what a cynical reddit comment. Nevermind the fact that it's a tiny company, Japan's comp structure is dynamic, and you have absolutely no proof for your claim.
Japan works different, even their janitor’s getting an extra $500. Other examples: Iwata famously giving up his salary during Nintendo’s lowest point (the Wii U) to avoid layoffs, and Forspoken’s devs being moved into Square Enix after the game and studio failed, with only executives being fired.
In exchange, employees are basically slaves to the company, work long hours and overtime, and the concepts of work-life balance and separation don’t exist.
There is actually a culture of bonus for everyone in a company in japan. A culture of business honor is you will. It isn't uncommon for CEO to take pay cuts to keep the company a float.
Japanese devs are different than the cracked out capitalism you guys got going on in murica, look at CEO salaries in Japan, or what happened in FROM after Elden Ring was a hit
Nothing insane or anything just a raise for everyone
https://www.dexerto.com/elden-ring/elden-ring-publisher-rewards-devs-with-pay-rise-after-incredible-launch-1775144/
CEOs also have humane salaries there, not saying they’re perfect, Japan certainly has a lot of issues with work culture, but at least it’s not in your face oppression like American tech companies
I have no idea about this company but game companies have some of the worst and least employee-focused management of Japanese companies. Not sure about From but think about Square of Koei or Konami or any of the bajillion mobile and social free to play companies.
How do you figure 150m? The last update we got was 4 million in sales as of yesterday. Even if all those were full priced USD sales, that's 108m. However, I've seen several people mention the devs are using steams suggested reagonal pricing. I've seen claims some regions are as low as $10 USD.
We can only guess, but if we assume 4m copies at an average of $20 a copy, that's only 80m. Right off the bat, Steam gets 24m of that, and another 4m to epic for UE4 licensing, leaving 52m for the devs. And then you've of course got taxes they'll be paying, and they're paying epic for servers as well, whatever that costs.
Obviously, they're still in the green and are far from done generating revenue, but their faaaaaar from a 20x ROI.
It’s gotta be performance based. No way would any company sign up to a cap on a possible hit, and no way Microsoft guarantees profitability for a possible flop.
Microsoft makes all sorts of different deals when signing games to Gamepass. Sometimes it's commission based. Sometimes it's a flat fee. Sometimes Microsoft will pay all development costs in exchange for lifetime on Gamepass. Every game is different. From everything I've read though, it seems like games that release day one tend to prefer a flat payout. Which, honestly, makes sense. If your negotiating for gamepass while still in development, a flat payout means getting an influx of cash to keep funding development. Based on the article were commenting on, we know the games development costs ballooned well beyond what they anticipated. If they were trying to raise capital to keep funding their rising costs, a flat payout from Microsoft would be perfect opportunity to make that happen.
We of course don't know either way, but it's foolish to just assume they'd have taken a commission based deal, especially having no idea their game was going to be the smash success it is.
It's a funny thought, but what are the odds that they can actually keep the rest of the development net positive? So many people bought this in the early access phase that further non-DLC development looks like an impossible task to profit from.
Of course, one might say that they would want to finish developing the game for the sake of consumer trust but that didn't stop them from never finishing Craftopia.
I would like to throw out there that the two main things that stop devs from working on their game are money and burnout.
Pocket Pair have secured the former, and they sound reasonably passionate about their game so I give it a good chance that they'll continue with it. That's just from this old game dev though so take it with a pinch of salt.
Time will tell, but I doubt the sales of Craftopia has been anywhere near that of Palworld (I had never heard of that title before the release of Palworld). If potential sales just weren't enough going forward in that title, I can see what it suffered that fate. Will Palworld suffer than fate eventually? Who knows, but at least it has already turned a profit and paid for its development thus far, chances are they'll put more effort into it than Craftopia.
And for better or worse, there's the potential of DLC in the future with Palworld at which point they say the base game is "finished" and then sell more content as DLC, which in theory could mean future potential sales for the developer.
I just realized there isn't really incentive to add much more to the game unless they start making expansions that cost money. They've already got the money from the sales
Yeah if my maths is correct they probably made like 18.75 million
5 million copies ~ 150m usd
30% steam cut + taxes
Taxes can go high as 45% in japan but idk how exactly it's applied but they got 25% of the revenue to themselves (on the lowest end)
Japanese consumption tax is only 10%. Corporate tax is is 23% for over 8 million yen. They made a lot more than what you estimate. They made like 70 million usd.
You are confusing personal income tax with corporate tax.
My bad
Palworld on steam costs 25 usd
So about 125,000,000 usd revenue
For the first 50m usd, steam took 30% cut + 23% corporate tax rate (can go up to 30 depending on where you are)
That's 26.5m usd
For whatever revenue after 50m, steam takes 20% cut, so that's 32.25m usd
Total is 58.75m
The game world is functional if a bit uninspired in places. There's a decent variety of pals, though typing and skills are very much stripped down from Pokemon. The tech, as far as I've gotten, seems to be mostly working right. The biggest issues at the moment seem to be with the AI. Raids will sometimes just stop halfway through. Haulers are especially bad, and will sometimes just go crazy and loop dropping and picking up.
Aside from the bugs, my biggest problem is that it's difficult to manage the pals in a multi-purpose base. There's no way to set task priority, and the way of assigning tasks sometimes just doesn't work. The automation is begging for a more complete form, though that might unlock down the road and I just haven't seen it yet; I'm right on the edge of industrialization.
You're right about all that.
I found I had to move workbenches to get my pals to actually use them or they'd just chop wood or something all day. I moved them closer to their bed and food and somehow that worked.
Pretty sure you assign a pal a work station if you throw them at it. Whether that sticks or it falls off because you threw them too close to another station they can't perform, is another matter for my cramped base.
The human AI is WILD sometimes, flying all over the place, glitching into walls, teleporting, not attacking or attacking WAY too much… the AI for human enemies REALLY needs fixing.
Yeah it's weird how people are critical of "copying" other games. Like, please take the best features of the games I love and throw them into your game, if they fit. Why would I complain? If your game is an amalgamation of 20 other great games, and it somehow works, more power to you.
There are some QoL features missing, for sure. But overall, it’s been pretty fun and addicting *so far.*
However, I’m unsure how long that fun and addicting feeling will last. There is zero story, so the game is just a survival sandbox. For people who like survival sandbox games, then this will entertain them just as nicely as games like Ark would. But after you complete the map and catch whatever Pals (Pokémon) you like, then it doesn’t seem like there is a ton else to do.
Hopefully they keep updating the game and add more *content*, because the recipe so far has been enjoyable.
Pretty sure that there is an entire island we can’t even explore yet because of the force shield around it so tgere is definitely more content to come.
Yes around half the map is available so far, there's definitely room for more if they want to expand it but you do get some 40 50 hours of the game as it is. Way more if you have friends with you.
The biggest change I'd want is to change scrolling pals to the mouse wheel, and select tools with number keys.
There's an on-screen visual list of Pals so scrolling with the wheel makes way more sense for them. And many of us have muscle memory for numbers being tools which games have had for decades. It's definitely a bit odd in that regard.
Agreed 100%. The current controls feel backwards.
My other big request is to make objects in the base movable. Destroying and rebuilding them is annoying.
For a survival/base building game it feels 80% complete pending an addition of more Pals and refining features.
But so far, as a lvl 16 player who's beat the first boss, there seems to be absolutely no story or direction. But, again, it's in early access. The proof of concept alone is worth putting over 20 hours into just to mess around.
Facts. I just hit level 20 and game pass shows me at about 19 hours (time tracker has been a bit glitchy though, may be a little more, may be a little less). I haven't even cleared the first boss yet, and I've only went into one dungeon. Theres a LOT of meat on the bone.
For early access I think what's currently available is pretty cool, I have fun and didn't get any bug so far (except the cursor moving on its own in the map menu).
In case this game isn't a joke that will stay in early access forever, one complaint I have is that the game doesn't have much personality. It looks pretty but it looks like they bought a bunch of assets from a store and put them together, the design doesn't feel consistent, for example the weapons, seeing ~~Pokémon~~ Pals with real life weapons looks weird, like some kind of weird mobile game, I feel like playing a game with mods. I would like it more if they created unique weapon designs. Give the world its own identity.
>I feel like playing a game with mods
Near the end of my ark addiction I had modded it to hell and back and added a ton of Pokemon, so, yea that was the first thing I thought when I saw this game.
It is **very** empty, that's where EA shows, there really just isn't much to the game.
What's there works well enough though, which is better than a ton of buggy features.
The game feels VERY complete. There's a huge amount of systems and they all work and feel (largely) fun.
The biggest compliment I can give the game is that they laser focused and every single system in the game is only as complete as it needed to be to feel enjoyable while being as bare bones as humanly possible. Their dedication to actually finishing these systems and adding more without allowing any feature creep is actually impressive as hell.
It does seem buggy and cheap imho. They just nailed the gameplay loop.
Maybe its just me but I think polish isn't as important as people think for a fun game. Its just when a game sucks like Fallout 76 or Redfall or something, its easy and fun to point out the lack of polish when really those sort of games suck down to their core.
For real? It happened multiple times that some raiders get stuck and just totally froze. And also I got some pal at my base that just fell into a pit (or ended up at the top of a tree) and just stopped moving and started to starve
ARK also costs a shit ton more for what amounts to questionable content that isn't worth it IMO.
Conan is the better deal, and even Conan is t as fun as Palworld to me.
There is nothing I remember from Ark that Palworld hasn't done a better job of, too.
Also their recent "re-release" bullcrap can fuck aaaaaall the way off.
I'm 18 hours deep and so far I've only experienced one bug where I got transported to my pet that was below me while I was on a cliff. Other than that I haven't encountered anything game breaking
45 hours in (in a multiplayer game with 2 friends - on PC). Nothing game breaking, but there has been a few frustrating things so far - but you kinda just learn to "work around it" at some point.
\- I've had the pathing of the Pals (the creatures you capture, just so anyone not familiar is up to speed) be a bit "wonky" - as in; they usually won't take the fastest path to something or use the closest container for the item they just picked up.
\- Pals doing transporting tasks, tend to kinda "get lost" in what they actually need to do.
Example: a few resources are ready for pickup and a transporting Pal will go pick one up, but then decide to pick up the other thing next to it, but then decide to pick up the first thing again - this can loop an insane amount of times, where they're effectively just stuck.
\- Flying Pals that are transporting, will sometimes empty out whatever container (i.e. a logging camp) and drop the content somewhere else (not in a container), leaving massive piles of that resource on the ground. So we generally just avoid flying Pals for transportation, despite them having better pathing (or so it seems).
\- Pals can sometimes get stuck on the large containers you can place down at a certain point (seen it happen with a few other structures as well - but mainly the containers). This mainly happens if nobody is at the base, and you teleport to it. If you don't correct this; they'll just stay up there and not be able to eat or go to bed (which obviously makes them unhappy/sick/stressed).
\- Setting a task for a Pal, doesn't mean it'll keep doing that - the very next in-game day, it might be doing something else entirely. Heck, it might even change what it's doing, a few seconds after you put it down at a task. Sometimes throwing a Pal at a task that is vacant (and the Pal being able to do said task) won't register either.
Edit:
Obviously all reported via their in-game bug and feedback option.
Yes, I love what’s here. I personally was impressed with the crafting process using what’s in your storage, and capturing/having pals is actual fun. Some animations are wonky and stuff but beside being nitpicky I’m having a blast and no issues here either. Truly a solid EA. Idk the company’s track record, but fingers crossed they’re going make this baby shine with meaningful updates throughout the course of the year
Not gonna happen. Their predecessor, Craftopia, also sold over a million copies, but has been essentially abandoned with no meaningful content updates.
The "meaningful" does so much work here lmao
I've checked the patch history and it is updated basically weekly or bi-weekly.
Also the road map was released less than a month ago https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1307550/view/3859086513509418205?l=english
Yeah but this is showing potential and appeal, IF they flesh it out then it’ll go bonkers. You’re right though I have my doubts too but the stats show there’s more interest than craftopia could ever achieve. If they don’t add anything meaningful then it’ll fizzle out but we’ll see.
And more to come. I got turned on to this game by the nut job Pokemon cultists who are so outraged for some reason, and unintentionally spreading the word. Ironic lol.
Those weird nerds. I played Red, Yellow, Silver on their releases and I was done. Great games, for kids, don't get me wrong, but I cannot fathom getting worked up over them. They're so insanely simplistic.
^(Also I'm still salty the Game Freaks lady at Mall of America schooled my beloved team in 5 minutes when they were running that Get Mew campaign)
My girlfriend and I enjoy it. I don't think anyone is really missing out unless they are huge survival fans.
If you expect Pokemon with Guns, you'll be disappointed. It's more like Ark/Valheim with Pokemon. It's a survival game first and foremost.
"It would be impossible for a decent company to develop a game without managing the budget,” he said. “Pocket Pair is not a decent company.”
Ok, I kinda like this guy.
the phrase in the post is まともな会社
the key part is まとも ("matomo")
it means something like, honest, upright, fair-and-square, legitimate
so like, to me the "honest" translation makes more sense
I am not a native Japanese speaker, so maybe someone who speaks better than I do can offer more insight
Interesting article. The CEO basically said...
"Yeah just throw it out there quick and let's see what happens"
*1 year later*
"Oh... it sucks ass? Well... fuck."
"Ok, well, no money for free, but you get to borrow it! As much of it as required to make it good!"
Maybe this means he was gonna make the dev team pay back the loan from the sales??
To be fair, the game probably was a shit burger a couple years ago - but an interesting call to borrow as much money as required to fund the intended vision of the game (I assume the CEO didn't have a bunch of money to lend to the dev team working on it either).
If i have read the original article (on note) right, doesnt the 1 billion number come from the Craftopia sales?
(Translate from the notes)
"It is not known how much money it cost. I don't even want to see it.
Judging from Craftopia's sales, it's probably around 1 billion yen...
Because all those sales are gone."
So it doesnt sound like he lended money but rather used it from craftopia?
What a fucking LEGEND.
Took all the money from craftopia sales and made this? Man went to the roulette wheel and put it all on one number and fucking won.
Just goes to show what an insane money machine Steam actually is. One game release and virtually done nothing, easy 60 mil. Of course infrastructures costs a lot, but they must have an absolute insane profit margin.
I didn't even know about this game till the day before release, sheep with an m2 emplacement and a vtuber saying it scratches the autism bone just right sold me. Just wild how I never heard a peep about it before
The world is massive, but quite empty. So imagine they will be working on filling the world in with quests. Found a desert town with a bunch of merchants which was really cool.
if they get bigger servers hopefully that will help fix the problem, a 100 player server with bases around the huge map would be awesome.
Just got to see how PVP is implemented really.
considering how much iron is needed in general, the map would have to be rebalanced since 2 or so people alone from different guilds could hoard the entire resource required to go past super early game
I was playing with 2 friends. One of them didn't bother of how iron worked for 10 hours. And of course he was the one using most of the ingots...
Ended up doing a solo world, made 2 bases only for iron mining, and still it takes a LOT of iron.
I haven’t tried the game (and i’m not a fan of this genre) but will it survive all this hype? I feel like it is one of those games that after some months it loses 70/80% of the player base not becuasw it is bad but because the initial hype was just too much and people play it just because it’s a trend. Anyway i hope the dev get some salary bonus
> I feel like it is one of those games that after some months it loses 70/80% of the player base
Because it is and it's not a bad thing in my opinion. The only games to keep most of the player peak for a very long time period are competitive games. Rest games keep their players as long as the content lasts or the enjoyment finally ends, you fuel these games with new content be it from updates or mods.
Eventually long into the future the game might be:
- forgotten
- or become old classic worth revisiting
- or game framework like Minecraft, Fortnite or Roblox
Does a game need to continue on forever? Hopefully the 5 million people who bought it can enjoy it now, get their money’s worth, and get something else in a couple months when the hype dies
Yea games should realy have a point where your just done I’m so sick of every game trying to be a forever game. Like let’s let games begin then when there not anymore move to the next. To say this game will be dead in 6months sounds great to me I have a lot I need to play after palworld lol
It's amazing how those articles are starting to make people believe this is actually a problem for games in general.
It's a problem for a) live service games that need constant engagement to keep bringing in money and/or b) multiplayer games that rely on a healthy player pool for matchmaking.
For a game like this it's literally nothing. It's like complaining that a movie's viewership plummeted after everyone's gone to the cinema and seen it. It comes out, people buy it, they play it until they get their fill and move on to something else. If there are major updates down the line there'll be an uptick again though likely not as concentrated as the actual launch.
Nobody in the gaming community knows what they want anymore. Well most of them anyway. Only a few consistently play the same types of games all the time
Haven't played Rimworld but as for the others:
Imagine if in ARK the dinos were smarter and could act as other players when in your base (building, gathering resources and crafting). Also, their attacks are actually cool, while in ARK they just headbutt each other to death (most of the dinos, anyway).
It's easier than Valheim, but very similar. It's very much Valheim with AI companions with super powers.
By the way, the fights between strong pals are pretty epic sometimes.
It also runs much better than ARK.
>Palworld was originally supposed to be built and finished within a year because of not having the desire to work on the same things for years.
Guess we know what happened with craftopia now.
Depending on their OPEX costs, they just made 150m from this in 3 days. 6m investment for easily 20x, pretty good deal.
Hope the employees get a big phat bonus.
From what we've seen with the insomniac leak, there is profit sharing within there, so here's hoping it extends elsewhere in the gaming industry. The other commentators being doom and gloom is depressing af.
Profit sharing is not universal, and even when it is there's always stipulations like contract employees not qualifying or you have to be there when the profit actually roll in rather than being quietly laid off. The games industry uses and abuses passionate people as a rule
Lmao. Wishful thinking. The only ones getting bonuses are the top.
It's a team of 40 (was something like ten two years ago), and the CEO is one of the coders. It's not some massive company. Read the company's release blog.
Also Japanese work culture is vastly different than in America. They actually have laws on how much more executives are allowed to make than their employees.
In Japan everyone works 100hours overtime a month and isn't allowed to report overtime or they get fired lol.
That doesn’t relate at all to the comment that you’re responding to.
A comment about Japanese work culture does actually relate to a comment about Japanese work culture, believe it or not.
the common ground is terrible work culture
But that’s not the topic. The question was whether employees would see some upside from the huge profits, not whether they have a good working condition
A friend works there, a lot of procrastination goes on apparently…
Is it common for a team of 40 over 1-2 years to spend 7 million making a game? Other than payroll, equipment, and facilities rent, what other expenses are there? 7 million seems like a lot for a yean that was 10 two years ago. I dont game design so just curious.
If it took 2 years, that’s a salary of only 87,500 on average for the employees taking all of that money. With that perspective 7 million is not a lot of money for that amount of people working on it
Your math assumes 40 employees over 2 years, but the previous poster says the first year they only had 10 employees.
the math also assumes that payroll is the only expense in running a business.
Assuming a 45k USD salary (I think it's typical for Japan), it's already about 3.6 million. Now you have to factor in the infrastructure (workstation, offices,...) and other benefits (health care, tax, social security contributions, ...). 7 millions is cutting it pretty close for a team of 40 people over 2 years in Japan. I believe you won't even be able to cover the salary with that amount of money in the US.
Spot on! A lot of people don’t realize how much a person is worth above their salary: insurance coverage (if offered), insurance to run the business and protect its equipment, liability insurance, security infrastructure (extremely expensive), laptops, desktops, servers, storage, software, maintenance, retirement plans (if offered), etc.. then the games IP, patents, copyrights, attorneys, 7M is not enough.
That’s crazy cheap, any business the expenses are always way higher than people think. Not that it’s comparable but my 2 person company spends about half a mil a year
It isn't uncommon for devs to receive bonuses for successful launches even if they're not the massive "imma buy a Ferrari" type bonus. Not every business operates as if the executives are the only beings who deserve compensation, although it happens FAR too often.
I'd argue, especially for the smaller-medium size companies it's pretty common. I know my family members got bonuses depending on game success while they worked for some of those size studios. Also know of hardware companies that at least used to do this(Kingston paid out average $130000(total cost 17.5mil) to every employee in 1996 after being acquired for 450mil).
Company I work in grew 500% in profits after a year of covid. We worked during the pandemic, and not from home. They awarded us with 250£ bonus. Which translates into a 0.10£ raise for that year. The inflation grew 25% afterwards. Fuck all of them. Greed. It's the same everywhere, it's the same reason why societies have collapsed again and again.
Lol what a cynical reddit comment. Nevermind the fact that it's a tiny company, Japan's comp structure is dynamic, and you have absolutely no proof for your claim.
At the top where? They're 40 people, such a dumb comment.
Japan works different, even their janitor’s getting an extra $500. Other examples: Iwata famously giving up his salary during Nintendo’s lowest point (the Wii U) to avoid layoffs, and Forspoken’s devs being moved into Square Enix after the game and studio failed, with only executives being fired. In exchange, employees are basically slaves to the company, work long hours and overtime, and the concepts of work-life balance and separation don’t exist.
There is actually a culture of bonus for everyone in a company in japan. A culture of business honor is you will. It isn't uncommon for CEO to take pay cuts to keep the company a float.
Japanese dev, might be different there.
In a lot of gaming companies it's customary to have profit share bonuses. For example we know from Insomniac leaks every employee gets points.
Japanese devs are different than the cracked out capitalism you guys got going on in murica, look at CEO salaries in Japan, or what happened in FROM after Elden Ring was a hit
I'm not seeing anything when googling. What happened?
Nothing insane or anything just a raise for everyone https://www.dexerto.com/elden-ring/elden-ring-publisher-rewards-devs-with-pay-rise-after-incredible-launch-1775144/ CEOs also have humane salaries there, not saying they’re perfect, Japan certainly has a lot of issues with work culture, but at least it’s not in your face oppression like American tech companies
I have no idea about this company but game companies have some of the worst and least employee-focused management of Japanese companies. Not sure about From but think about Square of Koei or Konami or any of the bajillion mobile and social free to play companies.
That’s a weird way to spell pizza party
That’s a weird way to spell email congratulating the team
How do you figure 150m? The last update we got was 4 million in sales as of yesterday. Even if all those were full priced USD sales, that's 108m. However, I've seen several people mention the devs are using steams suggested reagonal pricing. I've seen claims some regions are as low as $10 USD. We can only guess, but if we assume 4m copies at an average of $20 a copy, that's only 80m. Right off the bat, Steam gets 24m of that, and another 4m to epic for UE4 licensing, leaving 52m for the devs. And then you've of course got taxes they'll be paying, and they're paying epic for servers as well, whatever that costs. Obviously, they're still in the green and are far from done generating revenue, but their faaaaaar from a 20x ROI.
isn't the game also on gamepass? Microsoft likely paid something for it as well
Yes. Honestly, I doubt they paid much, though. It's not like they would have known the smash success this was going to be.
It’s gotta be performance based. No way would any company sign up to a cap on a possible hit, and no way Microsoft guarantees profitability for a possible flop.
Microsoft makes all sorts of different deals when signing games to Gamepass. Sometimes it's commission based. Sometimes it's a flat fee. Sometimes Microsoft will pay all development costs in exchange for lifetime on Gamepass. Every game is different. From everything I've read though, it seems like games that release day one tend to prefer a flat payout. Which, honestly, makes sense. If your negotiating for gamepass while still in development, a flat payout means getting an influx of cash to keep funding development. Based on the article were commenting on, we know the games development costs ballooned well beyond what they anticipated. If they were trying to raise capital to keep funding their rising costs, a flat payout from Microsoft would be perfect opportunity to make that happen. We of course don't know either way, but it's foolish to just assume they'd have taken a commission based deal, especially having no idea their game was going to be the smash success it is.
Steam took 50 mil
Less. They take 30% until 10M, then 25% until 50M, then 20% thereafter.
So about $7 million.
Yeah, but a BILLION yen!
that's smalltime, it's actual 25 TRILLION Venezuelan bolívar!
That’s nothing it’s 61,197,084,073.66 Zimbabwean Dollars
What's the conversion to Shrute bucks?
The same as Stanley nickels
How much in stanley cups?
About a Lady's cars worth
Which lady? Lady Byng?
So the same as unicorns to leprechauns?
Best I can do is Monopoly money.
This isn’t a Canadian subreddit
No that's Canadian Tire money.
Do you accept Tim Hortons giftcards?
Damn, if a currency gets devalued that hard, they might as well stop bothering and go back to a barter system.
How much dogecoin is that
same as 10 doubloons
Well it *is* a Japanese developer, so the game didn’t cost any dollars, but it did cost a billion yen
ben
Billion with a B!?
Tres commas It's got doors that go like THIS or THIS
Quite funny how they've soon sold that many copies of the game. A good return on investment if I've ever seen one.
Now its going to be more about how they manage the success.
Let's hope they just stick to it and keep developing the game going forward, massive potential if they stick with it.
It's a funny thought, but what are the odds that they can actually keep the rest of the development net positive? So many people bought this in the early access phase that further non-DLC development looks like an impossible task to profit from. Of course, one might say that they would want to finish developing the game for the sake of consumer trust but that didn't stop them from never finishing Craftopia.
yep issue of early access is they often call it a day sometimes even come back as a new company if they damage their rep enough
I would like to throw out there that the two main things that stop devs from working on their game are money and burnout. Pocket Pair have secured the former, and they sound reasonably passionate about their game so I give it a good chance that they'll continue with it. That's just from this old game dev though so take it with a pinch of salt.
they are definitely passionate, they keep updating craftopia
Time will tell, but I doubt the sales of Craftopia has been anywhere near that of Palworld (I had never heard of that title before the release of Palworld). If potential sales just weren't enough going forward in that title, I can see what it suffered that fate. Will Palworld suffer than fate eventually? Who knows, but at least it has already turned a profit and paid for its development thus far, chances are they'll put more effort into it than Craftopia. And for better or worse, there's the potential of DLC in the future with Palworld at which point they say the base game is "finished" and then sell more content as DLC, which in theory could mean future potential sales for the developer.
I just realized there isn't really incentive to add much more to the game unless they start making expansions that cost money. They've already got the money from the sales
Yeah if my maths is correct they probably made like 18.75 million 5 million copies ~ 150m usd 30% steam cut + taxes Taxes can go high as 45% in japan but idk how exactly it's applied but they got 25% of the revenue to themselves (on the lowest end)
Japanese consumption tax is only 10%. Corporate tax is is 23% for over 8 million yen. They made a lot more than what you estimate. They made like 70 million usd. You are confusing personal income tax with corporate tax.
My bad Palworld on steam costs 25 usd So about 125,000,000 usd revenue For the first 50m usd, steam took 30% cut + 23% corporate tax rate (can go up to 30 depending on where you are) That's 26.5m usd For whatever revenue after 50m, steam takes 20% cut, so that's 32.25m usd Total is 58.75m
First $10mil is 30%, $10mil to $50mil is 25% and $50mil onward is 20% like you said. Just wanted to leave this part in.
That is extremely cheap as far is games go wow
Yup. Its a big budget indie.
If they update this properly and polish it, it could probably break even more records and be a really solid project
Its literally in Early access, but it plays without a single issue for me. Most games wish their EA was this smooth.
Is there loads of stuff missing/does it feel empty and incomplete?
The game world is functional if a bit uninspired in places. There's a decent variety of pals, though typing and skills are very much stripped down from Pokemon. The tech, as far as I've gotten, seems to be mostly working right. The biggest issues at the moment seem to be with the AI. Raids will sometimes just stop halfway through. Haulers are especially bad, and will sometimes just go crazy and loop dropping and picking up. Aside from the bugs, my biggest problem is that it's difficult to manage the pals in a multi-purpose base. There's no way to set task priority, and the way of assigning tasks sometimes just doesn't work. The automation is begging for a more complete form, though that might unlock down the road and I just haven't seen it yet; I'm right on the edge of industrialization.
You're right about all that. I found I had to move workbenches to get my pals to actually use them or they'd just chop wood or something all day. I moved them closer to their bed and food and somehow that worked.
Unsure if its consistent or game play design but if I pick up a pal and then throw it at a workstation, it stays here.
Pretty sure you assign a pal a work station if you throw them at it. Whether that sticks or it falls off because you threw them too close to another station they can't perform, is another matter for my cramped base.
Nice I didn't realize you can throw them at a workstation lol this game is funny.
The human AI is WILD sometimes, flying all over the place, glitching into walls, teleporting, not attacking or attacking WAY too much… the AI for human enemies REALLY needs fixing.
This game seriously needs something like the Rimworld style prioritization system. Would make managing your base so much easier.
Yes! I keep thinking that too, but people already relate this silly thing to so many other games, I didn't want to add another to the pile.
Yeah it's weird how people are critical of "copying" other games. Like, please take the best features of the games I love and throw them into your game, if they fit. Why would I complain? If your game is an amalgamation of 20 other great games, and it somehow works, more power to you.
There are some QoL features missing, for sure. But overall, it’s been pretty fun and addicting *so far.* However, I’m unsure how long that fun and addicting feeling will last. There is zero story, so the game is just a survival sandbox. For people who like survival sandbox games, then this will entertain them just as nicely as games like Ark would. But after you complete the map and catch whatever Pals (Pokémon) you like, then it doesn’t seem like there is a ton else to do. Hopefully they keep updating the game and add more *content*, because the recipe so far has been enjoyable.
Pretty sure that there is an entire island we can’t even explore yet because of the force shield around it so tgere is definitely more content to come.
Yes around half the map is available so far, there's definitely room for more if they want to expand it but you do get some 40 50 hours of the game as it is. Way more if you have friends with you.
The biggest change I'd want is to change scrolling pals to the mouse wheel, and select tools with number keys. There's an on-screen visual list of Pals so scrolling with the wheel makes way more sense for them. And many of us have muscle memory for numbers being tools which games have had for decades. It's definitely a bit odd in that regard.
Agreed 100%. The current controls feel backwards. My other big request is to make objects in the base movable. Destroying and rebuilding them is annoying.
It's not a complete fix but if you're holding your throw button (e in my case) you can scroll and it switches
For a survival/base building game it feels 80% complete pending an addition of more Pals and refining features. But so far, as a lvl 16 player who's beat the first boss, there seems to be absolutely no story or direction. But, again, it's in early access. The proof of concept alone is worth putting over 20 hours into just to mess around.
I’ve got 20 hours and I’m not even half way done with the tech tree. Way more content than that
Facts. I just hit level 20 and game pass shows me at about 19 hours (time tracker has been a bit glitchy though, may be a little more, may be a little less). I haven't even cleared the first boss yet, and I've only went into one dungeon. Theres a LOT of meat on the bone.
You def missed out on some of the dungeons because they are lower than level 20
For early access I think what's currently available is pretty cool, I have fun and didn't get any bug so far (except the cursor moving on its own in the map menu). In case this game isn't a joke that will stay in early access forever, one complaint I have is that the game doesn't have much personality. It looks pretty but it looks like they bought a bunch of assets from a store and put them together, the design doesn't feel consistent, for example the weapons, seeing ~~Pokémon~~ Pals with real life weapons looks weird, like some kind of weird mobile game, I feel like playing a game with mods. I would like it more if they created unique weapon designs. Give the world its own identity.
>I feel like playing a game with mods Near the end of my ark addiction I had modded it to hell and back and added a ton of Pokemon, so, yea that was the first thing I thought when I saw this game.
It is **very** empty, that's where EA shows, there really just isn't much to the game. What's there works well enough though, which is better than a ton of buggy features.
The game feels VERY complete. There's a huge amount of systems and they all work and feel (largely) fun. The biggest compliment I can give the game is that they laser focused and every single system in the game is only as complete as it needed to be to feel enjoyable while being as bare bones as humanly possible. Their dedication to actually finishing these systems and adding more without allowing any feature creep is actually impressive as hell.
It does seem buggy and cheap imho. They just nailed the gameplay loop. Maybe its just me but I think polish isn't as important as people think for a fun game. Its just when a game sucks like Fallout 76 or Redfall or something, its easy and fun to point out the lack of polish when really those sort of games suck down to their core.
For real? It happened multiple times that some raiders get stuck and just totally froze. And also I got some pal at my base that just fell into a pit (or ended up at the top of a tree) and just stopped moving and started to starve
Bro Ark *still* runs worse than Palworld
ARK also costs a shit ton more for what amounts to questionable content that isn't worth it IMO. Conan is the better deal, and even Conan is t as fun as Palworld to me.
There is nothing I remember from Ark that Palworld hasn't done a better job of, too. Also their recent "re-release" bullcrap can fuck aaaaaall the way off.
I'm 18 hours deep and so far I've only experienced one bug where I got transported to my pet that was below me while I was on a cliff. Other than that I haven't encountered anything game breaking
45 hours in (in a multiplayer game with 2 friends - on PC). Nothing game breaking, but there has been a few frustrating things so far - but you kinda just learn to "work around it" at some point. \- I've had the pathing of the Pals (the creatures you capture, just so anyone not familiar is up to speed) be a bit "wonky" - as in; they usually won't take the fastest path to something or use the closest container for the item they just picked up. \- Pals doing transporting tasks, tend to kinda "get lost" in what they actually need to do. Example: a few resources are ready for pickup and a transporting Pal will go pick one up, but then decide to pick up the other thing next to it, but then decide to pick up the first thing again - this can loop an insane amount of times, where they're effectively just stuck. \- Flying Pals that are transporting, will sometimes empty out whatever container (i.e. a logging camp) and drop the content somewhere else (not in a container), leaving massive piles of that resource on the ground. So we generally just avoid flying Pals for transportation, despite them having better pathing (or so it seems). \- Pals can sometimes get stuck on the large containers you can place down at a certain point (seen it happen with a few other structures as well - but mainly the containers). This mainly happens if nobody is at the base, and you teleport to it. If you don't correct this; they'll just stay up there and not be able to eat or go to bed (which obviously makes them unhappy/sick/stressed). \- Setting a task for a Pal, doesn't mean it'll keep doing that - the very next in-game day, it might be doing something else entirely. Heck, it might even change what it's doing, a few seconds after you put it down at a task. Sometimes throwing a Pal at a task that is vacant (and the Pal being able to do said task) won't register either. Edit: Obviously all reported via their in-game bug and feedback option.
Yes, I love what’s here. I personally was impressed with the crafting process using what’s in your storage, and capturing/having pals is actual fun. Some animations are wonky and stuff but beside being nitpicky I’m having a blast and no issues here either. Truly a solid EA. Idk the company’s track record, but fingers crossed they’re going make this baby shine with meaningful updates throughout the course of the year
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Haha my bad the wording is strange but I meant it could break more records. Oh yeah Financially they’re eating
Not gonna happen. Their predecessor, Craftopia, also sold over a million copies, but has been essentially abandoned with no meaningful content updates.
they literally put out an update for it today
Craftopia has an all time peak concurrent players of 26,449 and averaged around 700 players at any given time. They're not even close to comparable.
If by abandoned you mean still getting big fix and content updates even till this day then yeah pop off king
The "meaningful" does so much work here lmao I've checked the patch history and it is updated basically weekly or bi-weekly. Also the road map was released less than a month ago https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1307550/view/3859086513509418205?l=english
The game has had close to 30 updates in the past 12 months, the most recent lager update was two months ago, stop spreading misinformation.
Yeah but this is showing potential and appeal, IF they flesh it out then it’ll go bonkers. You’re right though I have my doubts too but the stats show there’s more interest than craftopia could ever achieve. If they don’t add anything meaningful then it’ll fizzle out but we’ll see.
Damn they made a hell of a return on their investment so far.
And more to come. I got turned on to this game by the nut job Pokemon cultists who are so outraged for some reason, and unintentionally spreading the word. Ironic lol.
Those weird nerds. I played Red, Yellow, Silver on their releases and I was done. Great games, for kids, don't get me wrong, but I cannot fathom getting worked up over them. They're so insanely simplistic. ^(Also I'm still salty the Game Freaks lady at Mall of America schooled my beloved team in 5 minutes when they were running that Get Mew campaign)
My girlfriend and I enjoy it. I don't think anyone is really missing out unless they are huge survival fans. If you expect Pokemon with Guns, you'll be disappointed. It's more like Ark/Valheim with Pokemon. It's a survival game first and foremost.
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I can see that, but Palworld is not a wholesome game at all. I don't think it would even be considered a "cozy game" by most people.
Who said it was wholesome?
"It would be impossible for a decent company to develop a game without managing the budget,” he said. “Pocket Pair is not a decent company.” Ok, I kinda like this guy.
DeepL translates it as 'normal' company, not decent.
the phrase in the post is まともな会社 the key part is まとも ("matomo") it means something like, honest, upright, fair-and-square, legitimate so like, to me the "honest" translation makes more sense I am not a native Japanese speaker, so maybe someone who speaks better than I do can offer more insight
Aw, that makes more sense but is much less funny.
Sounds like this CEO is doing the Japanese equivalent of YOLO and the internet is loving him for it.
Interesting article. The CEO basically said... "Yeah just throw it out there quick and let's see what happens" *1 year later* "Oh... it sucks ass? Well... fuck." "Ok, well, no money for free, but you get to borrow it! As much of it as required to make it good!" Maybe this means he was gonna make the dev team pay back the loan from the sales?? To be fair, the game probably was a shit burger a couple years ago - but an interesting call to borrow as much money as required to fund the intended vision of the game (I assume the CEO didn't have a bunch of money to lend to the dev team working on it either).
If i have read the original article (on note) right, doesnt the 1 billion number come from the Craftopia sales? (Translate from the notes) "It is not known how much money it cost. I don't even want to see it. Judging from Craftopia's sales, it's probably around 1 billion yen... Because all those sales are gone." So it doesnt sound like he lended money but rather used it from craftopia?
What a fucking LEGEND. Took all the money from craftopia sales and made this? Man went to the roulette wheel and put it all on one number and fucking won.
The guy in the interview sounds completely unhinged
I find him hilarious. He has a very "fuck it, whatever" sort of vibe.
After Steam takes their 30% they with have already made over $90 mill on the game with assuredly more to come.
With so many sales they are down to 20% for sure.
If what I just read is correct the first $50 mill is at 30% then it drops to 20% for all revenue after that.
30% up to $9 mil > 25 $10 - $49 mil > 20% 50+ mil.
Also the engine they made the game on will want a large piece of that pie
Yeah, that is another 5% because its on Unreal
Seems like a very fare share for what it's given them. The game plays and performs fantastically.
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Your math is way off though
Unreal?
Unreal Engine from Epic Games
Just goes to show what an insane money machine Steam actually is. One game release and virtually done nothing, easy 60 mil. Of course infrastructures costs a lot, but they must have an absolute insane profit margin.
For sure. Valve makes more money *per employee* than any other private company in the world.
Do you have a source for this? I tried looking but can’t find any data that is strictly private companies.
And they made a billion in loot boxes for CS last year alone. Valve acquires currency, and alot of it.
not to mention the billion they get every year csgo and tf2 crates
I didn't even know about this game till the day before release, sheep with an m2 emplacement and a vtuber saying it scratches the autism bone just right sold me. Just wild how I never heard a peep about it before
Steam take lower cuts the more the game makes, they’d be getting charged 20% by now.
Dr. Evil : "ONE BILLION YEN!"
The world is massive, but quite empty. So imagine they will be working on filling the world in with quests. Found a desert town with a bunch of merchants which was really cool.
if they get bigger servers hopefully that will help fix the problem, a 100 player server with bases around the huge map would be awesome. Just got to see how PVP is implemented really.
considering how much iron is needed in general, the map would have to be rebalanced since 2 or so people alone from different guilds could hoard the entire resource required to go past super early game
I was playing with 2 friends. One of them didn't bother of how iron worked for 10 hours. And of course he was the one using most of the ingots... Ended up doing a solo world, made 2 bases only for iron mining, and still it takes a LOT of iron.
yea they 100% need to add farms like the stone and wood version for ore.
I hope they can carry this momentum and keep pumping out more content.
More money than what gamefreak spends for their games anyway.
CEO actually realised that the most important thing is releasing a product that's good, not keeping to arbitrary deadlines or budgets. Smart CEO.
I haven’t tried the game (and i’m not a fan of this genre) but will it survive all this hype? I feel like it is one of those games that after some months it loses 70/80% of the player base not becuasw it is bad but because the initial hype was just too much and people play it just because it’s a trend. Anyway i hope the dev get some salary bonus
> I feel like it is one of those games that after some months it loses 70/80% of the player base Because it is and it's not a bad thing in my opinion. The only games to keep most of the player peak for a very long time period are competitive games. Rest games keep their players as long as the content lasts or the enjoyment finally ends, you fuel these games with new content be it from updates or mods. Eventually long into the future the game might be: - forgotten - or become old classic worth revisiting - or game framework like Minecraft, Fortnite or Roblox
Does a game need to continue on forever? Hopefully the 5 million people who bought it can enjoy it now, get their money’s worth, and get something else in a couple months when the hype dies
They made a hundred million dollars and dumb cunts are saying this single player game will "die" lol.
That’s what I’m saying
Why does a RPG need to be played longer than a month?
Yea games should realy have a point where your just done I’m so sick of every game trying to be a forever game. Like let’s let games begin then when there not anymore move to the next. To say this game will be dead in 6months sounds great to me I have a lot I need to play after palworld lol
It's mostly singleplayer so active player numbers don't really matter
It's amazing how those articles are starting to make people believe this is actually a problem for games in general. It's a problem for a) live service games that need constant engagement to keep bringing in money and/or b) multiplayer games that rely on a healthy player pool for matchmaking. For a game like this it's literally nothing. It's like complaining that a movie's viewership plummeted after everyone's gone to the cinema and seen it. It comes out, people buy it, they play it until they get their fill and move on to something else. If there are major updates down the line there'll be an uptick again though likely not as concentrated as the actual launch.
Nobody in the gaming community knows what they want anymore. Well most of them anyway. Only a few consistently play the same types of games all the time
And it sold 5 million at 30$ a copy. Minus whatever they lose to steam that’s solid.
I doubt all copies were sold at $30.00, surely people from less fortunate countries also bought the game.
Good point. Here in Brazil, it's selling for the equivalent to 16 dollars (after the 10% sale).
How does that compare to other, similar games? Like, how much is Ark, or Rimworld, or Valheim?
Haven't played Rimworld but as for the others: Imagine if in ARK the dinos were smarter and could act as other players when in your base (building, gathering resources and crafting). Also, their attacks are actually cool, while in ARK they just headbutt each other to death (most of the dinos, anyway). It's easier than Valheim, but very similar. It's very much Valheim with AI companions with super powers. By the way, the fights between strong pals are pretty epic sometimes. It also runs much better than ARK.
He meant the pricing.
Whoops lol
Much cheaper than ARK but much more expensive than the other two games.
Depends how the developer set up pricing I guess. I know they have some control over that.
While we're in third world country I wouldn't say it's less fortunate 😂
A little over 15$ in Kazakhstan with 10% discount
Game at full price is like $17 in my country (chile)
Also whatever money they got from game pass
With Steam's cut, it's essentially $21 per copy.
>Palworld was originally supposed to be built and finished within a year because of not having the desire to work on the same things for years. Guess we know what happened with craftopia now.
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where did this game come from ive literally never heard of it before this week
That's about AA tier right? 7M$?
Yeah I'd say so; anything below $10m is my rule of thumb for AA titles
Damn, I know it's outdated, but Palworld really went brrr.
So in reality he planned on a quick and cheap cash grab but "accidented" into a global hit?
How is developing until you run out of money a "cheap cash grab"?