Six years to the day after Craftopia launched into Early Access on Steam, Pocketpair has finally put a year on its exit. Craftopia will leave Early Access and hit version 1.0 in 2027, with the full release arriving on Steam, XBOX Series X|S, and XBOX on PC at the same time. Now that Palworld has exited Early Access, it seems like Pocketpair is going back to do the same with the game that started it all.
Pocketpair isn’t shy about that history in the anniversary post. The studio says that without Craftopia, Pocketpair as it exists today and even Palworld simply wouldn’t exist, and it describes the game as a project from a small group of friends who wanted to make their dream game. The post also includes an apology. Pocketpair admits its communication around Craftopia hasn’t always been good enough, and that since Palworld’s release, some players understandably felt the game was getting less attention. According to the studio, Palworld’s success actually freed up resources to tackle longstanding technical issues in Craftopia that had been extremely difficult to resolve.
Back when Palworld sold a million copies in eight hours, we said we hoped Pocketpair would provide better long-term support for it than it did for Craftopia, so it’s a little funny to see the studio acknowledge that exact concern two and a half years later. In my Palworld first impressions, I wrote that Craftopia was clearly Pocketpair’s first real attempt at a fully featured game, and that while we found it a bit shallow and eventually repetitive, the potential was obvious. Palworld is what Craftopia wanted to be, though it couldn’t get there in Unity.
As for what 1.0 actually includes, Pocketpair is tempering expectations on content volume. The update is focused on cleaning up and refining the existing game, fixing outstanding issues, and getting it polished for full release, though there will be some new content alongside it, with details coming later. The XBOX news is a mixed bag. Pocketpair says the XBOX community has had a particularly difficult experience with Craftopia, blames its own lack of experience at the time, and says it has now made the breakthroughs needed to ship 1.0 on XBOX Series X|S., with XBOX One not making the cut. The studio couldn’t reach acceptable performance and stability on the older hardware, so development for that version is being discontinued and 1.0 won’t release there at all.
Craftopia is available now in Early Access on XBOX One, XBOX Series X|S, and PC via Steam. Pocketpair says there’s still work to do before 1.0 and that more details on the update will come closer to release.
