Why Palworld Devs Issued An Apology For Inadvertently Fixing A Bug In Latest Patch
Of course, like any other monster catching game, you also use Pals for combat, and some of the most powerful Pals on the Palpagos Islands are those commanded by the bosses of the five towers that control the archipelago. Not only do they have loads of HP and high stats, but they also have unique powers that aren't available anywhere else in the game. Unfortunately, you can't catch them; as far as the game is concerned, the boss and the boss's pal are a single entity. It IS possible to catch them through an exploit, though—or rather it was, until yesterday's patch.
Many people reasonably assumed that it was never intended for players to be able to catch the tower bosses, and so the community naturally assumed that the bug fix, which wasn't mentioned in the patch notes for yesterday's update, was intentional. It turns out that boss-catching may have been on the docket all along. The official Palworld xwitter account posted the message above yesterday apologizing for "inadvertently fixing the bug."
Palworld developer Pocketpair is known for being a developer who avoids fixing "good bugs". In the company's previous game Craftopia, the company actively patched around several exploits in use by the player base to avoid impacting the fun factor of the game. While this might make the developer's job a little harder, it is almost inarguably good game design, as it avoids ruining the players' enjoyment of the game in favor of attempting to force the "intended" method of play.
In this case, the boss Pals do have unique attack moves that other pals can't learn. It's possible, through directed Pal breeding, to transfer these moves onto other Pals. Without the ability to catch the bosses, these moves simply become unavailable; it's likely that Pocketpair plans to make these moves available to the player base either by adding an official method to catch the bosses or through another avenue.
While Palworld hasn't seen any major content updates yet, it's only been about a month since the game's launch into Steam Early Access. In that time, the developer has issued multiple updates addressing major bugs and adding significant quality of life features, including full key rebinding and the option to toggle many inputs that were previously "hold" (like sprinting and building.)
The imagination dances at the thought of what the developers could add to the game in the future, but if you're on the fence about picking it up, we can safely say that it's already fully worth the $30 cost of entry if you're someone who enjoys survival-craft games or monster-catching games. It's playable even on modest hardware like the Steam Deck, and it's also available on the Xbox Series S and Series X game consoles, too.
