Palworld’s Crossplay Update: Steam, Xbox, PS5 Unite!

by

When Palworld was first released on Xbox and PC in January 2024, one of the biggest complaints that fans had with the game was its lack of certain multiplayer features. At launch, the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Microsoft Store versions of the game did not have dedicated server support, while the Steam version did. This meant that those who played Palworld through Xbox Game Pass could only experience the game with up to 3 other friends. Steam users, on the other hand, had access to 32-player co-op, due to the inclusion of dedicated servers.

Following the high demand from fans, Pocketpair, the independent Japanese developer behind Palworld, confirmed in February 2024 that it was working with Microsoft to add dedicated server functionality to the Xbox versions of the game. This feature was eventually added in June 2024, finally putting the Xbox ports of the game on the same level as its Steam equivalent. As exciting as this was, however, there was still a major problem that Palworld suffered from: it didn’t have full crossplay support. Although Xbox players could finally experience 32-player co-op, they couldn’t invite their friends on Steam to play with them. Fortunately, Pocketpair has promised that this issue will soon be resolved.

Pocketpair is Finally Adding Crossplay to Palworld Later This Month

A few days ago, Pocketpair confirmed that crossplay would finally be coming to Palworld in late March of this year. Although the feature was originally teased in early 2025 as part of a new content roadmap, the company couldn’t provide a release window for it at the time. Pocketpair still hasn’t announced an exact date for Palworld‘s Crossplay Update yet, but fans will probably not have to wait too long to find out when it’ll be released.

Thanks to this Crossplay Update, Palworld fans will be able to experience co-operative play with players on all the platforms that the game is available on, including Steam, Xbox, PS5, macOS, and the Microsoft Store. In addition, players will have the ability to transfer their Pals between worlds, according to Pocketpair. This presumably means that gamers will be able to carry their collection of Pals over to whatever platform they desire, but as of writing this article, there aren’t enough details as to how this feature will work and what limitations may apply. Nonetheless, it’ll still likely be a noteworthy addition to the game.

Palworld Does Currently Have Crossplay, But It’s Very Limited

Technically speaking, Palworld has actually had crossplay functionality since launch. Currently, however, the feature only works between the Xbox console and Microsoft Store versions of the game. PC gamers who subscribe to PC Game Pass, as an example, can play with players on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, but not with those on Steam. It’s also worth noting that, in its early days, the Microsoft Store version of Palworld was consistently one or two updates behind the Steam version of the game. As a result, it was missing some notable features and was quite buggy, which made it the worst way to play the game on PC. This effectively gave people very little incentive to switch to the Microsoft Store and use Palworld‘s crossplay feature.

Since April 2024, updates for the Xbox and Steam versions of Palworld have mostly been synchronized, so feature disparities between the two platforms are no longer common. With that being said, the PlayStation port of the game is still missing dedicated servers, unlike its Xbox and PC counterparts. Due to this, players cannot connect to a 32-player co-op session on PS5. It’s possible that Pocketpair will add dedicated servers to the PlayStation 5 version of Palworld in a future update, but since the company hasn’t explicitly stated as such, fans probably shouldn’t expect this to be included in the upcoming Crossplay Update.

Read More

2025-03-17 20:22