Pocketpair CEO on keeping the indie spirit alive after Palworld’s success

Posted by Andy Robinson27th Oct 2026 / 1:30 pm

There’s an openness to Palworld developer Pocketpair that feels unusual in the games industry.

Its office in Gotanda, an up-and-coming entertainment district in Tokyo, is almost entirely open plan. From the CEO’s desk to the kitchen vending machines, there are no dividing walls, and the developer seems unconcerned with maintaining the air of secrecy that surrounds so many Japanese studios – even with a news journalist strolling around.

On social media, it has one of the most active community managers in the business, and visitors are often welcomed to drop by, stroll through its banks of developer desks, and have a go on the Palworld-branded UFO catcher. It’s a far cry from other famous Japanese studios, which have been known to limit visits to closed meeting rooms and, sometimes, deny requests to use the bathroom.

Its approachability is particularly striking for a developer whose breakout success brought it a level of scrutiny that few independent studios experience. Palworld was barely out of the gate when its creature designs and eclectic combination of familiar mechanics attracted accusations of being derivative.

And then, of course, there was the Japanese lawsuit brought by The Pokémon Company, which alleges patent infringement, separate from the criticism that some of its creature designs bear conspicuous similarities to existing Pokémon (with some later redesigned).

At VGC, we extensively covered the controversy around Palworld in its early days and, more recently, published a 3/5 review of its 1.0 update. In my experience, other studios might have hunkered down, but it’s admirable that none of this changed Pocketpair’s willingness to talk.

Rather than dismissing our coverage, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe was keen to hear my take on why Palworld, a game that has clearly resonated hugely with players, so far has a critical consensus that doesn’t quite match the enthusiasm of players. The only off-limits topic was that Nintendo lawsuit, which Pocketpair said they couldn’t legally comment on.

Mizobe attributes Pocketpair’s openness to its unusual origins. Founded in 2015, the company grew out of his experience in web and technology businesses, rather than the traditional Japanese games industry.

“When I think about it, perhaps the Japanese games industry is a little more closed,” he told VGC. “But I don’t think that’s because companies are trying to hide anything or because they don’t want to be transparent.

“Historically, Japanese companies have placed a lot of importance on protecting their employees, maintaining security, and protecting information. Without going too deeply into the history of Japanese business, there have been a lot of hard lessons learned over the years.

“But Pocketpair didn’t really start in that traditional way. We started as a group of friends coming from web culture, and we’ve always had a very open-source kind of culture. Very early on, we set up a Discord server for our players, and we’ve always had this very open style of communication with our community.”

That culture has survived a transformation few could have predicted when Mizobe formed the company in 2015 with fellow university students. Pocketpair’s first game, card-action title Overdungeon, established its formula of combining eclectic genres together. Its next game, the Zelda- and Minecraft-inspired Craftopia, gave Pocketpair its first big hit, selling over one million copies.

But nothing could prepare it for the near-overnight success of Palworld’s early access version, which launched for Xbox and PC in January 2024 and amassed 25 million players in a single month (it now has more than 40m, according to the studio).

Mizobe says there’s little he could’ve known that would’ve prepared him for the success (“I’d probably tell myself to buy more servers”), which has seen the studio greatly expand, launch an indie publishing business, establish a licensing company with Sony Music, and kick off mobile spin-offs with Krafton.

More notably, it forced him to reckon with a challenge few others have faced: How do you maintain your indie culture after a monumental hit like Palworld?

Mizobe is clear that Pocketpair intends to continue developing Palworld. The game is becoming an IP in its own right, with opportunities to reach new audiences through partnerships like a trading card game developed with Bushiroad. But the CEO claims he has no intention of committing the company’s entire workforce to it forever.

“I think it’s something that not just us, but a lot of indie developers who have had big hits recently are struggling with,” Mizobe said. “Of course, Palworld is a huge hit that millions of players love, and there’s nothing that we or the players want more than for the game to continue and become even bigger.

“But rather than thinking about it in terms of things like ‘live service,’ we’re more focused on finding the best way to continue Palworld that makes sense for the players. But to say that we would put 100% of Pocketpair’s resources into just making Palworld isn’t something that we want to do.

“We want to keep finding fun ways to mix things together, because that not only leads to new experimental games, but can also help introduce Palworld to a wider audience. Palworld will, of course, continue, and it will continue in different ways. But we also want to take on new challenges. Maybe those challenges will be relatively small, but as a company, we want to keep trying new things.”

The Pocketpair boss says he’s determined to maintain the studio’s indie spirit, and part of that means keeping the freedom to try new ideas rather than becoming a company defined by a single franchise.

That philosophy also informs its publishing business, which Mizobe claims was established not simply to generate revenue, but to help independent developers navigate similar challenges it faced.

“There are plenty of large companies and developers that get into publishing, but what we wanted to do, first and foremost, was to help developers who might not have much experience with the business side of releasing a game,” he said.

It also means listening to criticism. Mizobe says he values players’ opinions above all else, but he also recognizes that critics’ reactions matter. “It’s not a problem unique to games, and balancing those two perspectives can be very difficult,” he said. “But we’re trying to pay attention to both as much as we can.”

Read on for our full interview with Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe.

Interview: Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe

What do you think made Palworld resonate with such a huge global audience so quickly?

Before Palworld, we developed a game called Craftopia, which was a survival crafting and automation game. That actually sold over a million copies, which we were very, very happy about.

So, from the beginning, when we started making Palworld, we knew we wanted automation to be a part of it. We felt that automation was still a relatively small genre at the time, but one that was growing, and we thought there was huge potential there.

Rather than having machines or factories doing the automation, though, we thought it would be fun to have creatures doing those things instead. It adds a sentimental and emotional element that other automation games don’t really have. Even internally, we found that very endearing quite early on, so we knew the game had a lot of potential.

Of course, if you look back at early Palworld, it had much darker themes. It was a bit more controversial. Some of the early trailers showed things that never actually made it into the final game, and some of those things were quite dark.

As we continued developing the game, through Early Access and up to 1.0, we listened to player feedback and gradually started moving more towards the cozier side of living with your Pals, rather than the whole sweatshop image that the game had initially.

There were also things that we thought would make Palworld popular, like having multiplayer and making the game very streamer-friendly. But ultimately, we felt that simply making a game that players would find fun, a very no-fuss, fun-first kind of game, was probably what would resonate with people from day one.

What has been the most difficult part of managing Pocketpair’s extraordinary growth in such a short space of time?

As a company grows, there are obviously going to be a lot of problems and new challenges. When I think about the time we were developing Craftopia compared to when we were developing Palworld, there were naturally a lot of challenges that we hadn’t expected.

In the early days, Pocketpair had a much rougher, flatter structure. It was very fun and felt very free. But as the company and the team grew, we had to start organizing things a little more carefully. I wouldn’t necessarily say we became more corporate, but with more people, you do need more structure. For me, the most important thing is protecting Pocketpair’s identity.

From the beginning, I’ve strongly felt that Pocketpair is a true indie company. Maybe from the outside we don’t look like one anymore, but we still believe we’re independent. We’re only beholden to ourselves, and we can act in the way we want to because we don’t have the same level of oversight that some other companies do.

In our minds, we’re still indie, and we want to keep making games in that indie way. If you look purely at our size and numbers, perhaps we’re approaching the AA level now. But we still want to preserve that indie freedom, where we can develop games without people constantly looking over our shoulders.

Of course, as we make bigger games and attract more attention, more people and companies outside Pocketpair are going to be paying attention to what we do. So, we also need to be mindful of how others perceive our development practices. But fundamentally, our identity is about making games for the players first, and we’re going to try our best to preserve that mindset.

You’ve shown you’re willing to break conventions of traditional studio culture, for example, by insisting employees have Steam playtime. Do you think doing things differently from other Japanese companies has been key to your success?

First of all, I adore the Japanese gaming industry, and I don’t say that just because I’m Japanese!

Over the years, gaming culture has changed a lot, especially here in Japan as the market has grown. Traditionally, Japanese gamers tended to play games that were developed domestically. But as the market has grown, gaming culture in Japan has become much more internationally minded.

At the same time, Japanese companies are making bigger and more amazing games, and people all over the world are falling in love with the way Japanese games are made. So, Japanese developers are now making games for both their domestic audience and this growing international audience.

“As we continued developing the game, through Early Access and up to 1.0, we listened to player feedback and gradually started moving more towards the cozier side of living with your Pals, rather than the whole sweatshop image that the game had initially.”

We really want to be involved with both sides of that industry, and we want to make games that appeal to everyone while still feeling a little different. The Japanese game industry has a lot of very large companies making incredibly impressive AAA games. Many of those games are based on established IPs that people around the world already know.

At Pocketpair, we’ve made three games so far: Overdungeon, Craftopia, and Palworld. All three were made in a very indie way, starting with Overdungeon, which was developed by a tiny team. They’re also all new IPs. We want to stay faithful to that Japanese philosophy of making games, while also finding our own way forward, separate from what a lot of the more traditional companies are doing.

You were originally an engineer in the web industry and did all kinds of work, including starting up businesses. Did this experience outside of games give you some perspective you might not have otherwise obtained?

To be honest, when I think about the games industry, I often compare it to the history of music or art. Over time, genres evolve and change. You go from classical painting to modern art, or from classical music to more contemporary music.

I think the history of games is very similar. If you look at games from 20 or 30 years ago, both the way they were made and the types of games people were making were very different from what we see today. I know that sounds a bit random, but bear with me!

As these genres evolve and grow, the market grows with them. In the beginning, the audience for a new genre might be very small and niche, but as the genre develops, it starts reaching more and more people.

So, to get back to your question, I think coming into the games industry after working in other industries was actually very beneficial for me. It gave me a chance to experience things in a different way, and all those experiences helped make me who I am today. In particular, learning from different people and learning how to combine ideas from different places has been very important to me.

At Pocketpair, we do some things that might seem a little unusual. For example, I’ve spoken before about how, in the early days, we recruited people directly from Twitter because we thought they were talented. That was actually an idea I brought over from working in the tech and web industries, where that sort of thing is quite normal.

Because I’d worked in those industries before, these ideas always felt very natural to me. But now that you mention it, I suppose they might seem a little unusual in the games industry. When I think about art and music, I think about how people take ideas from all sorts of different places and combine them to create something new and exciting. That’s something I’ve always wanted to bring into what we’re doing at Pocketpair.

You can see similar approaches in other creative industries, whether it’s the way people learn about art or how musicians create mashups. Our first game, Overdungeon, really came from that philosophy. It’s a game that combines genres that perhaps shouldn’t normally go together, and that approach has become a cornerstone of how Pocketpair develops games.

It was the same with Craftopia. We looked at automation games like Satisfactory and thought about how we could mix those elements with other types of games to create something different. And then, of course, with Palworld, we looked at games like RimWorld, for example, and came up with ideas for how we could combine different genres in a fun way.

Because simply mixing mechanics together doesn’t always result in something fun. It’s the experimentation that we really value. So yes, I think my experience in other industries has been very important. I’m not someone who started out in games and spent their entire career in the industry, and I think that different perspective has been valuable for us.

But I should say, I’ve loved games since I was a child!

When Palworld launched, that success brought a lot of attention, some positive, some negative. Could you talk about how you dealt with that? Whereas other studios might have closed themselves off to the outside world, you’ve not done that.

That’s true. When I think about it, perhaps the Japanese games industry is a little more closed. But I don’t think that’s because companies are trying to hide anything or because they don’t want to be transparent. I don’t think there’s any negative intention behind it.

Historically, Japanese companies have placed a lot of importance on protecting their employees, maintaining security, and protecting information. Without going too deeply into the history of Japanese business, there have been a lot of hard lessons learned over the years.

But Pocketpair didn’t really start in that traditional way. We started as a group of friends coming from web culture, and we’ve always had a very open-source kind of culture. Very early on, we set up a Discord server for our players, and we’ve always had this very open style of communication with our community. I think it’s really just something that has been there since the beginning.

Even when it comes to gathering feedback, we talk directly with players on Discord, whereas other companies might collect feedback in more traditional ways. We’ve always had that direct communication with players, and I think that’s probably why people see us as a very open company. Pocketpair really values its players. I know that might sound a little cheesy, but we genuinely do.

“Pocketpair didn’t really start in that traditional way. We started as a group of friends coming from web culture, and we’ve always had a very open-source kind of culture.”

Going forward, we want to maintain that as much as possible. Even if a player has never had the chance to visit Pocketpair or meet us in person, we’d like them to feel that we’re exactly the same people offline as we are when they communicate with us online.

You’ve just released Palworld 1.0. What does the future look like? What does it look like five years from now?

First of all, 1.0 was a big hit, and we’re really happy about that. We want to keep working hard for the players so they can continue enjoying Palworld. So, I want to be clear that we intend to keep making Palworld in some form so that players can continue having fun with it.

In particular, Palworld is no longer just a game. It’s starting to become an IP. For example, very recently, the Palworld OCG by Bushiroad was released. It’s a card game that players have really been enjoying.

Pocketpair is a game company, and fundamentally, what we do is develop games. So, rather than trying to handle all these different IP-related things ourselves, we want to work with different partners and companies that can help us expand Palworld in ways that we couldn’t do on our own.

I think that kind of cooperation is very special, and hopefully the synergy between Pocketpair and those companies will help us turn Palworld into a really fun IP that can last for a long time.

In your effort to retain the ‘indie’ spirit at Pocketpair, how much of a conflict is the desire to keep your millions of Palworld players happy, while also satisfying your want to make new things?

That’s a really good question, and I think it’s something that not just us, but a lot of indie developers who have had big hits recently are struggling with.

Of course, Palworld is a huge hit that millions of players love, and there’s nothing that the players or we want more than for the game to continue and become even bigger.

But rather than thinking about it in terms of things like “live service,” we’re more focused on finding the best way to continue Palworld that makes sense for the players. But to say that we would put 100% of Pocketpair’s resources into just making Palworld isn’t something that we want to do.

We want to keep finding fun ways to mix things together, because that not only leads to new experimental games, but can also help introduce Palworld to a wider audience. Palworld will, of course, continue, and it will continue in different ways. But we also want to take on new challenges. Maybe those challenges will be relatively small, but as a company, we want to keep trying new things.

You started the publishing business last year, and it seems to me, looking from the outside, that you’re not necessarily always looking for obvious hits. Could you explain what kind of games you look for, and how you balance commercial viability with projects you’re genuinely passionate about?

That’s a difficult question, and probably one that [comms manager] Bucky should be answering! But in the first place, I should say we didn’t set up a publishing company to make money. It’s something we’d been thinking about for a long time. We’ve always wanted to be more involved in supporting the indie space.

As a company, we feel that we have a lot of experience and knowledge of the indie industry, especially through the games we’ve made ourselves. There are plenty of large companies and developers that get into publishing, but what we wanted to do, first and foremost, was to help developers who might not have much experience with the business side of releasing a game.

Take a game like Cassette Boy, for example. From the outside, someone might look at it and think, “Well, this probably isn’t going to be a massive hit that takes over the world.” But the game has a lot of charm, and there are so many things that indie developers need to think about beyond simply making the game.

There are things like regulations, setting up the business side of things, awards, and all sorts of other areas that developers might not necessarily have experience with. We feel that we have a lot of knowledge and experience that we can share to help them.

But even if you put all that aside and look at Cassette Boy purely from a game development perspective, I genuinely think it’s something quite amazing. Honda-san, the developer, really is nothing short of a genius.

Whether we’re helping through investment or publishing, everyone internally was very excited about the idea of supporting developers like this. Nobody was against it from the beginning. Of course, sometimes games get pitched to us, and there’s a lot of discussion. Maybe we’re not sure about something, or maybe people disagree.

But generally, if we feel we can help a developer in a positive way, and if the vibes between the developer and us are right, then we’ll try our best to offer some kind of support.

“We didn’t set up a publishing company to make money. It’s something we’d been thinking about for a long time. We’ve always wanted to be more involved in supporting the indie space.”

With your own games, you’ve shown strength at identifying popular mechanics that resonate with players. But how much does critical success motivate you? I noticed you have a trophy cabinet out front, but is that a priority for you?

It’s an interesting question, and I think it’s something that not only the games industry, but other industries like film, have to think about very carefully.

There’s always a balance between the audience and the critics. You can find plenty of examples in the film industry where audiences love a movie but critics hate it, or where critics love something but audiences don’t. The same thing obviously happens in games.

If we look at Palworld, for example, it’s been a tremendous hit with players, but the critical reception has been so-so. Of course, speaking personally, I value the opinions of players above all else. As a game developer, I think it’s absolutely essential to listen to what players are saying. But I also think the reception from critics is important, and it’s not something I should ignore.

It’s not a problem unique to games, and balancing those two perspectives can be very difficult. But we’re trying to pay attention to both as much as we can. To be honest, and maybe this is a slightly strange way of looking at it, we basically believe that if we keep making really fun games that players enjoy, then the genres themselves will naturally become more popular.

And as those genres grow and more players come to enjoy them, we think the broader critical reception will become more receptive to them as well.

In the West, there’s a perception, understandably, with the thousands of layoffs and closures seen in the US in particular, and the success of Japanese and Chinese companies, that AAA’s future is increasingly shifting to Asia. Is that something you see, and if so, what factors have influenced that?

Of course, even though we’re based here in Asia, we hear a lot about what’s happening in Europe and the US, particularly the layoffs and the challenges the industry is facing there. We have a pretty good understanding of that situation, even if it doesn’t necessarily affect us directly.

But if I can be honest, even though you mentioned Asia, there’s actually one country that I’m incredibly envious of, and that’s Sweden! The Swedish games industry really is amazing. Of course, they have some huge studios, like Embark, the developers of ARC Raiders. But I think people might not realize just how many recent big hits on Steam have come from Sweden.

And a lot of my own favorite games recently have come from the US as well, like Slay the Spire, for example. So, I understand why people feel that Asia is leading the way right now, and there certainly are a lot of amazing games coming out of Asia. But there are also so many incredible games coming from the West that I think people should pay attention to.

And actually, seeing those games makes me feel that, as a Japanese game developer, we need to try even harder!

Last year, you said Nintendo Switch 2 was worth considering for Palworld and that it seemed like a great fit for the game. Is that something you’ve been considering as a real possibility?

Of course. First of all, I should say that we think the Switch 2 is a really amazing platform, not just for games globally, but especially here in Japan and for the Japanese games industry. It’s been an incredible platform. If there’s ever a future where we have the opportunity to discuss or consider bringing Palworld to the Switch platform in some way, then we’d love to have those conversations.

If you could go back to the day before Palworld launched and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

I mentioned this earlier, but I really want to emphasize that we never expected Palworld to become such a huge hit. Even if I could go back and tell myself, “Palworld is about to be a massive success,” I honestly don’t think there’s much I could do to prepare.

You can try to prepare yourself mentally, or prepare the company and its culture for that kind of success, but ironically, I think the anticipation and the shock of it all were part of what made the experience what it was.

There were certainly a lot of things we wish we’d done before releasing Palworld. But there’s no guarantee that, if we’d known what was coming and changed those things, the outcome would have been the same. Maybe the game would have been a huge failure. Maybe it still would have been a big hit. You just don’t know.

If I could go back a year before release, maybe there are things I would tell myself. But one day before launch? I don’t think there’s anything I could have said that would have made much difference. Well, actually, I’d probably tell myself to buy more servers!

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

It’s a big thing to end on, but I really just want to say that I love making games, and I love the indie games industry right now.

The indie industry has such an amazing history, with so many incredible games and so many great developers, and that history is very important to me. I feel a huge amount of gratitude towards all the developers and indie teams that have been making games over the years.

Their work has not only encouraged and motivated me personally, but I think it’s helped encourage and motivate the entire indie games industry. So, I just want to keep making fun games, and I hope everyone else will continue making their own fun games too.

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