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Palworld 1.0 launches July 10 — save your data, delete your mods

Palworld 1.0 launches July 10 — save your data, delete your mods
Palworld Palworld
#survival #creature-collecting #action-adventure #pc
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Palworld exits Early Access on July 10 with its 1.0 update, and developer Pocketpair has now pinned down an approximate release time: 12:30pm Japan time, which works out to 8:30pm PT on July 9, 11:30pm ET on July 9, 4:30am BST on July 10, and 1:30pm AEST on July 10. Communications director John "Bucky" Buckley stressed on Discord that this is an estimate, not a hard launch time.

On the save data question, Pocketpair's answer is nuanced: you don't have to wipe, but the studio thinks you really should. "Players can continue their existing saves if they wish, as we want to respect the time and effort you have put in," the official statement reads, "however, due to the large number of changes to the game, including overhauls to mechanics and new content, we believe that starting a new character will give you the best experience of Palworld." The 1.0 patch is a massive one — Bucky has teased 27 pages of patch notes — covering overhauled raid mechanics, new base-building shapes and items, a fully revamped story, new locations, a Wildlife Sanctuary rework giving each sanctuary its own ecosystem, and reworked Tower Bosses. Mod users face an extra hurdle: Pocketpair is warning that old mod files — especially anything installed around 2024 — can cause crashes, corrupted saves, and broken quests even if the mods are toggled off. Simply disabling them isn't enough; the files need to be manually deleted from the game folder before updating. The studio recommends backing up save data first, then deleting mod files, then verifying game file integrity through Steam before launching.

Palworld launched into Early Access in January 2024 at $30 on Steam and day-one on Game Pass, immediately breaking Steam concurrent player records and generating sales figures so large that Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe admitted the studio couldn't handle the incoming revenue. The game has now surpassed 40 million players across its 2.5 years of Early Access. That runaway success came with complications — Nintendo and The Pokémon Company sued Pocketpair over patent infringement rather than copyright, seeking 5 million yen each plus damages and an injunction. One visible result was Palworld removing its Poké Ball-style summoning mechanic in a later patch. A court judgment is expected later this year, with Pocketpair reportedly holding its ground more strongly than Nintendo so far.

With 27 pages of changes dropping at once, this is the biggest single update Palworld has ever seen, and the community is clearly anticipating it. Anyone with mods installed should sort those files out before the update hits — Pocketpair won't cover support issues that stem from leftover mod data.

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