Palworld faced a wave of disdain upon release

Palworld, the survival game often referred to affectionately or derisively— as “Pokémon with guns”—sometimes elicited mixed reactions from critics when it first launched in January 2024.

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When it was released, we called it a “somewhat edgy, competent survival game with a core concept just dumb enough to be streamable.” At the same time, 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.

According to John Buckley, Pocketpair’s worldwide community manager, who spoke at GDC 2025 on Monday, it was “very popular to detest Palworld” following the huge launch since it was an “impressions printing factory.”

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Buckley also rebutted some of the accusations levelled 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.

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There were also accusations of plagiarism stemming from a series of posts on X that compared its models to Pokémon’s, which Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe called “slanderous” at the time.

The generative AI and plagiarism rumours have not entirely disappeared, but Palworld is still operating with an average of about 25,000 concurrent users on Steam. 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.”

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Buckley says the company decided to “go on the offensive” after its artists became upset over the allegations. Among other things, the company released concept art. It explained how designs are crowd-sourced through what he calls a “Pal Vote”—an internal process by which artists create mockups and the developers vote on whether they like, dislike, or have mixed feelings about individual monsters.

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Buckley asserts that “very few organisations could withstand a post-Palworld situation like we did.” “I believe that many businesses would fail due to the pressure, threats, and hostility, yet we were able to keep every employee. Because we are such a close-knit team, we were able to continue.”

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