Palworld News

Palworld dev responds to Nintendo and Pokemon infringement lawsuit

One of Steam's most successful games is under fire as Palworld faces a new lawsuit filed by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. The survival game rocketed to the top of the Steam charts in January, and was quickly given the moniker of 'Pokemon with guns' due to its cast of adorable animal companions. However, it has also faced questions about numerous design similarities to existing creatures from the Pokemon series, and now Palworld developer Pocketpair is facing legal action from Nintendo itself.

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UPDATE: It's actually happening: Palworld developer Pocketpair is being sued by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company

UPDATE (19/09/24, 10:00 AM BST): Pocketpair has issued a statement on the lawsuit filing via Palworld's official Twitter account. It reads as follows:

Nintendo has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Pocketpair, the studio responsible for Palworld. Palworld, of course, is heavily reminiscent of the Pokémon series, and has attracted a fair bit of criticism—and passionate defence—for how closely some of its creatures resemble those found in Nintendo's brand...
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Update v0.3.7: Optimization and anti-cheat measures

Palworld version v0.3.7 has been released!

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▼Game Optimization
・Improved processing load when there are many buildings
・Reduced memory consumption throughout the game

▼Network
・Strengthened anti-cheat measures

▼UI
・Fixed an issue where a blank page would sometimes appear in the server list

▼Other
・Other minor bugs fixed

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Thank you for your continued support of Palworld

In a time of uncertainty for live-service games, Pocketpair makes it clear that Palworld is staying as a premium title

Those of you worried that Palworld will go the full live-service route likely don't need to be, as developer Pocketpair has no plans to make it free-to-play.

Palworld is the kind of game that's pretty perfectly poised to go free-to-play if it wanted to, as all those sales certainly put it in a strong position for a good long while. Many games of its ilk typically are free-to-play these days, opting for microtransactions and DLC as the main form of revenue, but in a recent interview with ASCII Japan (as translated by Automaton), Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe was asked about whether Palworld will switch to the live-service model in its lifetime.

"When you think about it from a business perspective, making [Palworld] a live-service game would extend its lifespan and make it more stable in terms of profitability," Mizobe said. "However, the game was not initially designed with that approach in mind, so there would be many challenges involved in taking it down the live-service path." He also pointed out how games like PUBG and Fall Guys managed to successfully switch to a free-to-play model, but noted that both of them "took several years to make the shift. While I understand that the live-service model is good for business, it’s not that easy."