In a time of uncertainty for live service games, Pocketpair has made it clear that Palworld will remain a paid game.

Those worried that Palworld would take the full live service route probably don’t need to worry, as developer Pocketpair has no plans to make it free to play.

Palworld is the kind of game that could be completely free to play if it wanted to, as all those sales will surely keep it in a good position for a long time. Many games in its genre are often free to play these days, opting for microtransactions and DLC as their primary form of revenue, but in a recent interview with ASCII Japan (translated by Automaton), Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe was asked if Palworld would move to a live service model during its lifetime.

“From a business perspective, [Palworld] “A game with live services will extend its lifespan and make its profitability more stable,” Mizobe said. “However, this game was not originally designed with this approach in mind, so there will be many challenges in moving it down the road to live services.” He also pointed out how games like PUBG and Fall Guys successfully moved to free-to-play models, but noted that both games “took several years to make the transition. While I understand that the live service model is good for business, it is not easy.”

However, these comments have raised concerns among some fans that Pocketpair is indeed planning to turn Palworld into a live service game, so the official Palworld Twitter account provided some clarification on Mizobe’s comments. The post explains that the interview took place a few months ago, and says that the team is “still considering how to build a sustainable and long-lasting game for Palworld. We’re still discussing this internally as it’s quite challenging to find the ideal path, but we’ve decided that a F2P/GaaS approach isn’t right for us.”

“Palworld was never designed with this mode in mind, and it would take too much work to fit into the game at this point. Furthermore, we are very aware that this is not what our players want, and we always put our players first.”

Content such as skins and DLC are still being considered to “support development,” but Pocketpair plans to discuss these with players as they get closer to completion.

Palworld showed up on the Tokyo Game Show game slate earlier this week, and it points to a PS5 announcement, so if you’ve been itching to play the game on Sony’s console, keep an eye out for it in the coming weeks.