Palworld hits 1.0 — early access ends where it started, on top

Palworld’s early access era ended Friday. Pocketpair shipped version 1.0 on July 10, two and a half years after the January 2024 debut that made “Pokémon with guns” a global news cycle, and priced graduation at exactly nothing: the full release is a free update for existing owners, with old saves carrying forward, though the studio recommends a fresh start.

The headline addition is the World Tree, the sealed-off landmark at the center of the map that has taunted players since launch; 1.0 finally opens it as the endgame zone. Around it, per Tech Times’ read of the 27-page patch notes, floating Sky Islands roughly double the explorable map, tower bosses got redesigned arenas, and a new Wing Pack lets players fly without burning one of five party slots on a flying mount. There are new Pals, including an eel shaped like a sword that you can apparently wield.

The numbers came in fast. Pocketpair announced 40 million lifetime players on July 8, two days before launch. Over the weekend the game peaked at 855,525 concurrent players on Steam, its second-best mark ever, as PC Gamer’s Elie Gould reported Monday. Forbes’ Paul Tassi flagged the stranger stat: Palworld now appears on Steam’s all-time concurrent list twice, once for its 2024 launch and once for 1.0, which he called a first for any relaunch.

“I promise I’ll try not to just be posting Steam numbers every day but really, thank you so much, gamers. Obviously, we had high expectations for 1.0 internally, but this is staggering.”

That was Pocketpair’s John Buckley on X over the weekend, as quoted by PC Gamer.

Launched inside someone else’s blog post

On Xbox, 1.0 did not get its own stage. It arrived as one line in the Game Pass July wave-one announcement, slotted between Gears of War: Reloaded on July 9 and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 on July 21. Fitting, in a way. Palworld was a day-one Game Pass title back in 2024, when it was an unknown from a small Tokyo studio; the full release closes that loop with the game now carrying the wave rather than riding it. This is how Xbox launches things now — the twice-monthly wave post is the stage, and even a 40-million-player phenomenon shares it with a bowling game.

The gap between an owner and a Game Pass tourist is thinner than a version number implies. Both get the same build on the same day. The owner keeps the game when the subscription math changes, along with a save file that may date to 2024; the subscriber gets Palworld as ambient inventory, playable until it isn’t.

The Nintendo patent suit, still pending in Japanese court since September 2024, is headed for a quiet end: per Techdirt’s July 2 summary of patent analyst Florian Mueller’s assessment, a ruling is expected after November hearings, potential damages run to roughly $30,000 at most, and current builds face no injunction risk because Pocketpair already patched out the contested mechanics.

As for what “1.0” means when the update treadmill never stops — our read is that it’s a marketing boundary, not a finish line. PC Gamer notes launch-weekend players are already asking Pocketpair to prioritize bug fixes and base-building polish over new content, which is the live-service conversation, not the finished-game one. The label changed. The relationship didn’t.

One number stayed out of reach. Palworld’s all-time Steam record, 2.1 million concurrent players, was set in January 2024, the week half the industry treated the game as a punchline and a lawsuit waiting to happen. It still stands.