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.
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.
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