Amid the shocking news of Romero Games suffering widespread layoffs after the funding for its next game vanished during apparent publisher Microsoft’s own layoff wave, fans have latched onto a sliver of hope offered by John ‘Bucky’ Buckley, communications director and publishing manager at Pocketpair, the Palworld studio and the home base of Pocketpair Publishing.
That being said, that hope currently begins and ends with a simple tweet from Buckley, who responded to the statement shared on Twitter by Romero Games and studio director and CEO Brenda Romero. “Would love to hear more about this project if possible,” Buckley said.
The dream, which folks replying “Save them Bucky” and the like have clearly envisioned, is easy to see. Pocketpair Publishing, a publishing arm established specifically to spend some of that Palworld money helping more indie games get made, swoops in and saves Romero Games from financial duress. It would be great if that does happen, but that hypothetical is skipping far into the future.
What we have right now is a tweet. It is a tweet publicly expressing interest from a senior Pocketpair staffer who’s been deeply involved in the groundwork for its publisher and who is widely regarded as the face of the company in the West – I spoke to Buckley earlier this year about his time at the company and its ambitions – but it is still just a tweet. At most, this could end up being the start of a conversation that could lead to some sort of arrangement.
Romero Games said this project had not struggled with production, and had “hit every milestone on time, every time, consistently received high praise, and easily passed all our internal gates.” It sounds like the studio has a fair bit of game already built, and it doesn’t appear to be in dire straits apart from funding – a recurring challenge across the industry, especially in recent years, with countless studios reporting canceled deals or issues securing backing.
It is no coincidence that this volatile time for the industry has seen the rise of groups just like Pocketpair Publishing. Even before it formed its publisher, Buckley said the studio had received desperate offers from “some really big names” desperate for funding, because “no one has money at the moment.”
Pocketpair Publishing actually may have been announced sooner, but Buckley joked that the team kind of wanted some distance from Outersloth, the indie investment arm (not a publisher, but more hands-off) started by Among Us studio Innersloth after it had its own viral hit. Outersloth released its first annual report earlier this year, revealing a signing rate roughly eight times higher than most publishers, as well as a fascinating spread of projects with an RPG bend.
No one has money, indeed, and while some of the few folks who do have found ways to use it to help other developers, the necessity of these rescue measures – the fact that Romero Games, of all places, is in a similar situation – speaks to how dry funding has become.
Buckley himself has spoken about the value of shooting your shot in this industry, and that advice certainly paid off for Palworld with its Terraria collab. Who’s to say it won’t work out for Pocketpair Publishing and Romero Games? It’s too early to say it will, but I definitely can’t say it won’t.
