If you saw your social networking feeds flooded with Palworld after the PC and Xbox Game Pass versions were released last week, you may be thinking about checking out Japanese developer Pocketpair's open-world survival game, which is billed as "Pokémon with guns." But that's not the case. Xbox players should know, however, that the Xbox and Windows PC versions lack some features found in the Steam version and are currently bottlenecked from being fixed by Microsoft's certification process.

Following rumors that Xbox players were playing older builds of Palworld on Palworld's Discord server compared to the Steam version, Pocketpair's community manager, Bucky, moved to clarify the situation. For one thing, the version numbers between the platforms are different, but more noteworthy is the lack of some important features and fixes, players claim.

Palworld players on the Steam version can create and join a dedicated server, allowing up to 32 players to play in the same world and create guilds together. Xbox and Windows PC players, on the other hand, cannot create or join a dedicated server, limiting online cooperative play to 2-4 players. Game Pass players on Reddit also noted that the Steam version does not have the ability to name characters, the option to change pal names, certain sound effects, or an exit button to quit the game.

These discrepancies stem from the fact that "the version of the game is not the same on Steam and Xbox," Bucky wrote on Discord (courtesy of Windows Central).

"There seems to be some confusion about 'missing features' on Steam and Xbox. This is not entirely true," they continued. Some features may be slightly different or of different value, but other issues, such as the lack of a button to exit the game, are not the result of an "older build"; these are separate issues."

Until cross-play between platforms becomes possible, the Steam and Xbox versions will not have the same version number. Bucky explains, "Because at that point, internally, it will be the same game."

"Again, it's not that Xbox is necessarily 'behind' or anything like that, it's just that because of the different architecture of Xbox, it's fundamentally two different versions of the game."

This architecture is also why it takes longer to update the Xbox version compared to Steam: on Valve's marketplace, developers can apply patches whenever they want, but with Microsoft, updates go through the company's certification process must go through the company's certification process.

"Some of these things take extra time," Bucky said in a response to a fan's post about feature parity, "and we are really at the mercy of certification here. We are desperately trying to speed things up." They added in a separate reply that hot fixes are now "in the MS certification queue."

So. Pocket Pair is working to align the Xbox version of Pal World with the Steam version as soon as possible, but they will have to overcome Microsoft's red tape to do so. In the meantime, Game Pass players will be playing a less-featured version of the game. Hopefully future patches will get through Microsoft's certification process a little faster.