Palworld Modding Shift : How modding should proceed after IO Store split

(This is a PSA for Palworld Modding Communities which will be posted in a few other places. If you're here from one of said places, Hi! Careful checking out my posts, they may contain NSFW content! =^.-=)

Well this has been a mess...

Over the last 2 days we've had some really confusing changes for Palworld modding, the large Sakurajima update was super exciting but it also came with a surprise! With the update, PocketPair changed the packaging format to use a superior format with something called "IO Store", this newer format allows for fast loading and better streaming for many platforms and is a huge benefit in other categories. The issue? When the game is set to use a different packaging type, other packages become incompatible. This means mods in the older .pak format were no longer compatible with the set of IO Store .pak types, and vice-versa, meaning only one package type can be used at once. This 'broke' all previous mods Palworld had released for it, thankfully updating mods is really easy (it's a tick-box in UE5, then you just re-package and distribute the new pak format) but the community got impatient and vial toward the devs, so they reverted the change in format, but only on Steam.... (aka, Steam on old format, XBox/Gamepass on the new format)

Now, this has been a mess, and it's been really confusing with inconsistent messaging. So I want to make a post here with recommendations for modders on how to properly adapt then go over the situation and try my best to explain things in more detail (like why a switch to io store was even done in the first place, explain how reverting is going to cause us more issues as time goes on, and then explain how you can help improve things as either a modder or user).

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Users/Player - Here's some recommendations on how to proceed from this point forward

Rec. 1 : HAVE SOME PATIENCE. Like, holy damn, just wait for mods to be updated before storming PocketPair with pitchforks, alright? (Note, this isn't directed toward my usual NSFW audience, you guys have all been really awesome and patient. This is more targeted toward the casual crowd that lost their minds within minutes of the update)

Rec. 1.1 : Building off that last point, shifts in the modding space for games that are updated over time is extremely common and it's perfectly normal! PocketPair should be making changes that are the best for them and the game and we shouldn't impede their efforts. Modders will get around to updating everything and replacements for older mods will naturally take the place of those that don't. This is all expected, it'll take some time but moving forward is a positive change. (I understand the frustration when stuff stops working, but chill, things'll get fixed ^-^)

Rec. 2 : Take caution when updating from now on. Disable automatic updates for your platform and wait for experienced users to test the waters and see what does/doesn't work if your mod set-up is important to you. If you are an experienced user or modder, make sure to back-up previous versions just in-case something breaks and you need to revert for either play or testing. Even games out of early access can get a random update years down the line that breaks things (Looking at you Capcom, why did you do this to RE? What did we do to deserve such punishment? WAS IT THE BOOBIE MODS??? Q.Q)

Rec. 3 : State your platform when reporting issues and, if a mod doesn't support your platform, kindly ask the modder to release a compatible version. Since we now have to support 2 different formats this means there could be differences between the 2 we're not aware of. It's always best practice to note your platform when reporting issues, but this makes it even more important. Additionally, typically when modders don't release a compatible version for multi-platform it's normally caused by a lack of knowledge or time. So be understanding and link to resources like this one so they can get a track on what's going on and what to do to make a compatible version!

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Modders - Here's some recommendations on how to proceed from this point forward

To ensure the best experience for everyone, we as modders should try to support all of the latest versions of Palworld that we can. Previously that was easy since both PC versions were on the same format, even though they were technically different builds the functions and code between them were still compatible so even script mods had no issue. However, (at least at the time of writing) now we have 2 versions that require different steps to support, Steam's PC release, and then the XBox build that includes the PC Gamepass and MS Store releases. This means we need to supply 2 versions of our mods packaged for each platform from this point forward unless PocketPair decides to revert their revert and moves both platforms to IO Store (or they harm everyone by moving the xbox build back to the old format, I'll explain later why this would be a bad thing). This doesn't apply to Lua or C++ mods since they are loaded by UE4SS in an unpackaged state, but for BP mods and replacers, we'll need 2 versions.

So, here's my recommendations for Palworld modders moving forward.
(Nearly all of these apply even if PocketPair moves to a single format, so consider these 'best practices' of a sort)

Rec. 1 : Backup versions before updating. This applies to both the game version and mod versions! Preferably you'd keep an archive of your mod releases so you can always revert or reference back if something goes wrong. In this specific case it was easy for us to just release the 'previous version' as the Steam compatible version if you had released an IO Store version. Should also be fairly well known that game updates can break mods, if you're not an experienced modder it may be best to wait for others to test the waters and for tools to be updated if required before updating.

Rec. 2 : Modders should move their entire workflow to involve the UE5 editor, preferably using the Palworld Modding Kit ( https://github.com/localcc/PalworldModdingKit ). You can find a guide to setting up the modding kit on the modding wiki ( https://pwmodding.wiki/docs/category/palworld-modding-kit ). It looks daunting at first, but don't worry, once things are set up it's rather simple. The reason for this is reliability and consistency. I've been telling modders in our community to set up and use UE5 for their mods since it allows a lot more advanced workflows and ensures their set-ups survive changes like this. (Also worth noting, UE5 is required for animation importing, which is a bit of a focus for our community...) If you're looking for another guide on this matter, you can check out my SCake animation importing guide (no NSFW images in the guide itself, don't worry - https://www.michaelpstanich.com/article/SCake_HowToMakeAnimsGuide ) For everyone that followed this advice the IO Store change was just a tickbox in the editor and a repackage, it took less than 10 minutes to push a new version out and was fairly painless, everyone should be shifting to workflows like this one to prevent breakage in the future.

Rec. 3 : Package a version for each format/platform which means 1 for Steam with the old format and 1 in the new IO Store format for XBox/Gamepass. If you set up UE5 and start using ChunkIDs to separate your mod packages properly then this should be relatively easily to do (just a pain on the release and docs front). As mentioned in the previous Rec. 2, UE5 has these tools built in and IO Store is just a checkbox within the packaging settings (Go to "Platform" in the top bar, then down to "Packaging Settings" as a quick access to packaging settings. The setting here is called "Use Io Store" which you'll package 1 time with and 1 time without). For my own workflow I separate things into incrementing ChunkIDs (ChunkID determines what pak-# the file goes into), then when you go to Platforms > Windows > Package you'll get an export with each package number, I copy that into a folder then toggle on Io Store and run the process again to copy into a different folder. (Annoying, but not difficult)

Rec. 4 : Include version compatibility in your ReadMe/Download Pages/Filenames. We can't really determine what will be compatible in the future, but for current versions try to ensure users know which version is for which platform. Personally I'm doing this at a file-name level where the archives for Steam will now prefix with (Steam) and XBox/Gamepass prefixes with (XBox-Gamepass), then all version compatible stuff (like, say, lua exclusive mods) will have no prefix. It'll take time to have everyone following these kinds of standards, but try to keep your community/followers posted on where compatibility is if its relevant to you.

Rec. 5 : Adopt open modding and collaboration! One of the major issues I noticed was a lack of communication in the modding community about what was happening and a lot of selfish hostility demanding things that didn't make a whole lot of sense, eventually leading to this worse-than-before situation. We as modders should be working together to get things working instead of pushing against one another and refusing any help, or refusing to help others. If we continue down this path and keep giving PocketPair these mixed signals then modding is going to be completely screwed. Ultimately, in this case, PocketPair listened to less-than-experience 'modders' that refused to adapt and listen to more experienced modders, and has made the modding scene much more complicated as a result. We need to start sharing standards and better knowledge with one another so that things like this are less likely to happen in the future and adaption is quicker. (Our community had already adopted this mentality and we were fully updated without any struggle, and again after the revert. These things matter and can make all of our lives much easier. If you're confused about a change, ask experienced modders about it and be patient, listen in and be ready to adapt. A great modder adapts, a bad modder gives up and refuses to change.)

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Explaining the situation

Ok, now lets actually explain the shift in package types and what's going on.

Why switch to Io Store?
Simple, it improves loading and streaming assets on a wide range of platforms/hardware. While for a lot of modern systems you won't notice a difference (especially if you're not hitting memory limits or have a lot of io bottlenecks) this has massive benefits to console specifically, especially XBox Series S. So the reason PocketPair made this change was to make overall improvements to Palworld for all platforms which should reduce load times and improve performance across the board. Of course there's other things they could do to improve these things, but it's such a massive win on console that there's no reason not to do it.

Ok... so why on PC where it's not as effective?
This most likely comes down to their development pipeline and because the XBox version IS the PC version. Well, for Gamepass/MS Store version at least. The XBox/Gamepass version of Palworld has always been a different build than the Steam version (at first it even had different features/content!). However, PocketPair has synced up their development and now they are most likely just different packaged versions/exports. PC DOES have benefits from IO Store, so it's not like it was a bad call, but in reality PocketPair most likely just synced up their 2 pipelines into a single process so both versions were effectively the same package but with different exports (for platform reasons). So since Io Store is a massive win for console, when they synced up the PC version just switched to the overall better IO Store package type for universal gains and easier development.

Makes sense. So why do we now have 2 versions?
This is where stuff gets complicated, because it has to do with the "have patience" statements I made earlier. In short, changing the package method meant that all older mods needed to be updated, so when people launched the update for the first time none of their mods worked! This lead to casuals and incompetent 'modders' to immediately complain to PocketPair, blaming them for the mods breaking while demanding a revert. And PocketPair caved... probably the best argument for "don't listen to your community" I've seen in quite a long while. As mentioned previously, the IO Store format is a massive win for consoles so they most likely couldn't revert the change on XBox to hit their performance targets and obligations, which directly affects the Gamepass/MS Store versions. So yeah, only the Steam version was reverted, and the community forced this issue onto itself.

Yeah but, at least old mods work, right?
Some do, some don't, really depends what's changed, and this only applies to the STEAM version, XBox/Gamepass is still screwed. The reality is that most mods need to be updated eventually anyways and there's shifts in the scene that would replace a lot of the earlier mods already, so reverting the change really doesn't do much for us in the long-term. This revert is short-sighted, both from the community and PocketPair. But still, it'll be nice to use the older mods that do still work. Keep in mind that only BP mods and replacers needed .pak files anyways, script mods through lua or C++ were never affected and instead all broke because of changes within the game (as they do over patches). The real concern here, however, is that PocketPair could bring back IO Store for Steam since it just makes sense to do so from a development perspective and for the long-term health of the game. When they do, not only will previous mods be broken, but also all those made after this revert, ultimately doing even MORE damage than if we just kept IO Store and modders adapted. In other words, we'll be right were we already were but even worse off.

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And that's what I want to help prevent!
I'm making this PSA to let people know what's happening and help educate users/modders, while also advocating that we start making dual packages now to prevent future issues and help people adapt. There is a silver lining here in that we have the chance to 'get use to' these better practices and packaging for IO Store without mods being 'completely' unusable, but that does only benefit Steam users. So, let's say Steam does switch back to IO Store packages, then we can just transition to using the IO Store versions already packages for XBox/Gamepass! This will help minimize potential loss of mods in the future and ensure everyone gets to access mods to the same capacity, a win-win! Of course, if the community had already adopted better practices to begin with then none of this would have been an issue, but we can't change the past, only work toward a better, more sustainable future!

A reminder to everyone, if you ever need help you can always try our community, The Broken Chatbox ( https://discord.gg/h3vB7S4FEw ) to ask for help! Also, be very careful which guides you follow! There's a lot of bad info out there written by people who have no clue what they're doing/talking about (especially on YouTube, I cringe every time >.<). Hopefully as time progresses we get some better guides with best practices and proper information, and I hope to help on this front when I get the time.

Either way, thanks modding community for intentionally stepping on a rusty nail, now let's work on the anti-biotics!