Palworld Studio Hints 2025 Has One More Publishing Reveal
With Dead Take, Pocketpair muscled into this year’s Hollywood horror slate.
Most of us are mentally already on holiday mode, but Pocketpair Publishing is still poking the bear. The label spun out of the Palworld team says it might have one more announcement before 2025 taps out.
"Thinking we should announce one final publishing game for the year."
Quick catch-up on who these folks are
Pocketpair Publishing launched in January 2025 as the publishing arm of Pocketpair, the studio behind Palworld. Their first partner was Surgent Studios, the team behind the afro-futurist metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: Zau. Back when that deal was announced, Surgent CEO Abubakar Salim teased their collab as a "short and weird" horror project. That became Dead Take, which dropped at the end of July and featured Baldur's Gate 3 star Neil Newbon and Final Fantasy XVI lead Ben Starr. Not a bad way to start a label.
What this tease actually tells us
- November 5: Pocketpair Publishing hints on Twitter it will announce one more game before the year ends.
- The label is new this year (January 2025) and sits alongside the Palworld dev team, but operates as a publisher.
- Its first release was Surgent Studios' Dead Take in late July, starring Neil Newbon and Ben Starr.
- The next title is a mystery for now; no hints on genre, platform, or studio yet.
- They have said the projects they sign come from small studios.
- Per comments last month, they are not using generative AI in any part of their publishing slate.
So: vague tease, but the timing is interesting. New label, one shipped game already, and now a possible year-end announcement. If they do reveal something, expect another smaller-scale project with a clear stance against any gen-AI shortcuts.
Side note from the Palworld orbit
Separate from the publishing tease, the Palworld lead weighed in on Amazon shutting down fantasy MMO New World, calling it very sad and quipping: "That said, if Amazon want to slip me the files for the 2019 version..." Not related to the new publishing tease, but worth flagging if you are keeping tabs on that team’s mood and interests right now.