By
Oliver Brandt is a Contributing Pop Culture Writer based in Tasmania, Australia. Their focus is reporting on video games, film, and TV. They have extensive knowledge of video game history and communities both in Australia and abroad, animated films and television shows, and international cinema. Oliver joined Newsweek in 2024 and has previously worked at Men’s Journal, Parade, and more. They are a graduate of Curtin University. You can get in touch with Oliver by emailing o.brandt@newsweek.com. You can find them on X and Bluesky @chocobalt. Languages: English.
Contributing Pop Culture Writer
🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek’s network of contributors
In recent weeks, Palworld players on PS5 have been facing frustrating issues with their save files, with recent versions of the game giving errors and corrupted save files on Sony’s console.
Now, after developer Pocketpair has spent some time investigating the issue, it seems that for some players at least, the solution is to say goodbye to their beloved pals and wipe their save files.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), developer Pocketpair revealed it had identified the cause of the errors and corrupted save files on PS5, citing an issue with the PS5 backend that results from having too many save files. Players who had over 10 save data instances reportedly would see the game failing to save, which would sometimes corrupt the data.
Pocketpair apologized for the error in the post, saying that it was “ultimately our fault” and that it would be implementing a fix on July 10, 2025, that limits the maximum amount of save data on PS5 to 10 instances. Players who currently have more than 10 instances of save data won’t have any files automatically deleted, the developer says, and further improvements have been made to the save system to improve stability.
[Important Notice Regarding the PS5 Data Issue]
Thank you for your continued support of Palworld.
We would like to inform our players about the cause and solution for the recent PS5 data loss issue.
■ The Bug
As a result of our ongoing investigation, we have identified the…— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) July 9, 2025
Unfortunately, for some players who experienced certain errors – namely the CE-100022-5 and CE-100096-6 errors – there isn’t a clear path out of the troubles. Pocketpair says players who encountered this error in the past are likely to experience it again in the future, even after tomorrow’s patch, due to the corruption already inherent in their save files. The solution is a sad one for avid players: delete your entire save file, wiping progress and starting from scratch in the process.
“We regret to inform these players that the only solution in this case will be to completely delete all your Palworld save data before playing,” Pocketpair said in its post. “Please note that we do not collect and store save data on any platforms, so we cannot restore lost data. We deeply apologise for the inconvenience caused to our players.”
Some players in the replies have suggested that an affected PS5 player could join a friend’s save file on a different platform and withdraw their Pals, then retrieve them after restarting the game to avoid losing their Pals, but there’s no guarantee such a solution would work.
It comes not long after Pocketpair announced that Palworld had surpassed 32 million players, with the game reaching the milestone earlier this year.
