I really wonder how the palworld devs feel about being gamepass day 1. I have no idea what the payouts look like for them. It probably got a lot more people to try their game, but would they have done better selling it only on steam? They probably weren't in a position to negotiate a very favorable contract with Microsoft.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think that's looking at the deal in hindsight. Palworld had just as good a chance at flopping completely as hitting #1 worldwide, I imagine they were grateful for the opportunity to have some guaranteed income at the time.

[–] _sideffect 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Some? Didn't they make over 400m?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think they meant guaranteed income prior to selling the game, since they had no way of knowing how successful (if at all) the game was going to be once released.

[–] _sideffect 3 points 8 months ago

Ah, makes sense

[–] sinceasdf 22 points 8 months ago

Because craftopia and palworld have a social aspect getting a big seed of players who only played it because it was free (for them) was I think a catalyst in making palworld blow up like it did. There are too many games out there for people to look through so it probably helps get word out effectively to sell out cheap for a big initial audience like gamepass when you're a small dev. I only knew of craftopia or palworld because of gamepass at least

The flip side is Microsoft is 100% giving the above as a sales pitch to devs why they should put their game on gamepass for peanuts (paid in exposure!). That's probably some of what drives the shittier deal devs get now

[–] sonovebitch 9 points 8 months ago

Their previous game Craftopia was also on GamePass and somewhat successful. They probably had some leverage for negotiations.