Summary

• Palworld might not be fixing every exploit in the game, as indicated by a recent statement.
• Pocketpair addresses bugs and frustrations with steady updates, promising a bright future for the game.
• A balance could be struck between leaving enjoyable exploits and maintaining fair gameplay for all s.

Palworld might be widely recognized for the elements that it borrows from other games, but there's at least one key area where it's trying to take its own path. As a survival crafting game that tosses the basics of the Pokémon franchise into a world with base-building, guns, and criminal opportunities, Palworld seems to have scratched an itch for millions of players. The tough part comes in maintaining that spike of popularity, and it's interesting to see how developer Pocketpair is approaching updating the game and fostering a community.

As an early access title, Palworld is still in somewhat rough shape, with a variety of bugs and undercooked features dragging down its better elements. Nonetheless, it launched in a more complete form than many early access games do, and a steady pace for updates so far is promising for its future. Pocketpair is putting in work to address the biggest sticking points and most common frustrations that crop up when playing Palworld, but that doesn't mean that the studio is going to overhaul everything that's currently imperfect in the game.

Palworld Might Embrace Bugs That Players Enjoy

Although the negative aspects of buggy games tend to get the most publicity, it's not all that uncommon for poorly implemented features or unusual glitches to be more memorable and engaging than a more polished experience would have been. Palworld has been a great example of this so far, as the community has unearthed a wide variety of interesting exploits and unintended strategies that provide alternate ways to tackle the game's challenges. While some might prefer to stick to the proper methods of doing things, others have found excitement in pushing limits and breaking boundaries.

Interestingly, it seems that Pocketpair is willing to play ball with this concept, as indicated by a post from the official Palworld on X (formerly Twitter) that offers an apology for "inadvertently fixing a bug." The comment is in reference to an exploit that made it possible to capture bosses in the game, which could make for exceptionally powerful but unintended allies. Although the statement comes across as somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it's an interesting acknowledgment that Pocketpair is aware of the community's love for certain bugs and didn't actually target that one specifically in the patch.

Pros And Cons Of Leaving Exploits In Palworld

Leaving bugs that let players cheat the system in games can be both a good and bad thing, and there's a valid position to take on either side of the argument. From a critical standpoint, making it easy to break a game leads to fewer people having the intended experience. Although taking shortcuts might seem appealing, the thrill of being overpowered is usually a fairly fleeting pleasure compared to the more consistent pleasures of engaging with difficult challenges. Depending on how hard it is to make use of an exploit, they can also sometimes be encountered by uninterested players.

On the other hand, a game like Palworld is meant to put an emphasis on player freedom and creativity, and even unintended possibilities can contribute to an overall sense of experimentation. It also hearkens back to the days when most games would stay in the state they shipped in forever. If fans get attached to an element of the game that isn't directly damaging to the experience, seeing it get removed for any reason can be frustrating, as there's no way to access it again after an update.

The best case study in community attachment to bugs might lie in some of the titles from Bethesda Game Studios, who are infamous for shipping ambitious, exciting games that are full of problems. Bethesda tends to address a number of game-breaking issues, but a lot of minor glitches get left in. Although the active modding scenes usually lead to fan-made patches, bugs like pulling NPCs through doors in Skyrim or mistakes in Oblivion line reads can end up becoming endearing across repeated playthroughs, and not everyone would choose to install a fix if given the option.

What The Future Of Palworld Bugs Could Look Like

Pocketpair's statement on the fix for capturing bosses could definitely be encouraging to those who have developed a fondness for some of the game's exploits. It seems like the company might not actively be targeting certain bugs if they're aware that the community generally appreciates them, and the response makes it clear that the Palworld developers are paying attention. It's definitely a different tack from the way a lot of games approach updates, especially when compared against online PvP titles that need to ensure an even playing field for everyone.

Cheating or using exploits in Palworld could still ruin a multiplayer experience in a larger server, so Pocketpair has established plans to target cheating in the near future.

Palworld isn't entirely alone in this approach, and Baldur's Gate 3 is an interesting example of a game that's straddling the tightrope in its own way. Developer Larian Studios has left some fan-favorite exploits in the standard difficulty modes of Baldur's Gate 3 while removing them from the more challenging Honour Mode, which is a reasonable way to approach the situation. Although Palworld doesn't feature anything as hardcore as Honour Mode, it's not impossible that Pocketpair could eventually take a different tack across its difficulty levels.

Taking this as a definitive statement about the future of the game's development could be a bad idea, however. Once more game-breaking issues in Palworld have been addressed, Pocketpair could always shift its focus to encom more exploits. At any rate, even if the change that Pocketpair is cheekily apologizing for was unintentional, it's not likely that the studio will ever go back to reinstate a bug after it's been fixed. Capturing tower bosses could be fun in Palworld, but although the game might keep some of its most enjoyable glitches, that one's probably gone for good.

Source: Palworld/Twitter