Palworld will not change to free to play model, dev claims
Palworld developer Pocketpair has said that it won’t be making the game free-to-play, or changing the game’s model to games as a service.
How can this GaaS thing be sooo profitable and also such bad press that even mentioning it results in a "sorry we didn't mean that" article?
It's a double-edged sword. But f2p has become so dominant that certain types of games almost NEED to be f2p to be relevant. See Concord for a recent example.
Short answer: Whales.
Long answer: Watch the South Park episode on the topic. They explain it in detail. It's titled "Freemium Isn't Free".
Palwold dev talks too much
They never said it was going to be F2P or live service.
There was a leak or something a couple days ago, about a conversation they had had internally where they were considering retooling to F2P.