Palworld, the survival game often referred to as "Pokémon with guns"—sometimes affectionately, sometimes derisively—drew mixed reactions from critics when it first launched in January 2024.
We called it a "somewhat edgy, competent survival game with a core concept just dumb enough to be streamable" when it was released, while other players noted its similarities to Nintendo's popular monster-catching RPG. Still, it was an overnight success, peaking at more than two million users on Steam.
At a GDC 2025 talk on Monday, Pocketpair global community manager John Buckley said that it was "super popular to hate Palworld" after the massive launch because it was an "impressions printing machine."
Buckley also pushed back against some of the accusations leveled at Palworld in the immediate aftermath of its release, including claims that it had been produced using generative AI.
"I could stand here and tell you we didn't AI generate Palworld, but at least five people in this room are going to say 'liar.' But that's what it is. We've kind of given up repeating this, but we didn't, I promise," Buckley said.
There were also accusations of plagiarism that stemmed from a series of posts on X which compared its models to Pokémon's, and which Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe called "slanderous" at the time.
After Pocketpair's artists became upset over the allegations, Buckley says the company opted to "go on the offensive," among other things releasing concept art and detailing how designs are crowd-sourced through what he calls a "Pal Vote"—an internal process by which artists produce mockups and the developers vote on whether they like, dislike, or have mixed feelings on individual monsters.
The generative AI and plagiarism rumors haven't entirely gone away, but Palworld continues to plug away with an average of around 25,000 concurrent on Steam.
Pocketpair is also working on new features, including the long-awaited release of crossplay. In the meantime, Pocketpair is continuing to "hash out" the surprise patent lawsuit from Nintendo, which Buckley jokingly refers to as a "fellow indie company."
"I think very few companies could survive a post-Palworld situation like we did," Buckley says. "I think a lot of companies might crumble under the threats, under the pressure, under the negativity, but we managed to retain all of our staff. We managed to push on because we're such a close and tight knit company."
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