Palworld's developers are currently trying to fix a game-wrecking bug that permanently nerfs your character

Palworld Ancient Civilization Parts - Grizzbolt with a minigun — (Image credit: Pocket Pair)

At the time of writing, Palworld developer Pocketpair is almost drowning in success. The colorful survival game had attracted some attention during its development, mainly because "Pokemon with guns" is an elevator pitch you instantly want to see in action, but its actual launch has seen that translate into what looks like a genuinely organic viral success: and four days after launch, it's sitting pretty at over five million copies sold.

Success, however, brings its own problems. Since launch Palworld has faced various bugs, including connection issues and players losing save data, and it's clear from the game's Discord that the developers were in no way prepared for this level of success and are currently firefighting as best they can. But one particular bug has the potential to ruin your save to such an extent you'll need a reset.

It involves an item called "Memory Reset Drug" that is used to reset a player's skill points after levelling up, in theory allowing you to build-out characters differently. But at the moment, explains the developer, it resets one stat that you'll never be able to recover:

"Currently, using the item 'Memory Reset Drug' that resets the player's status may reduce the player's capture power and make it impossible to recover. We are currently investigating this issue, so we apologize for the inconvenience, but please refrain from using it until the investigation/correction is complete."

There's no ETA on a fix but, given subsequent posts, this studio suddenly has an awful lot on its plate. "Currently, we have received over 50,000 inquiries," says another note from the studio, which works out at roughly one for every 100 players.

"The development team is aware of serious bugs that are occurring, such as being unable to enter servers, unable to play multiplayer, and losing saved data, and are currently working on fixing them. We will share information about the fixes for these issues as soon as possible."

It does note that some workarounds have been discovered (if you have issues with losing save data, the developer recommends trying to restore from backup as explained here). But while success is a lovely thing, success on this scale creates a whole host of problems. Epic stepped in to save the day by boosting the game's server capacity when its success became clear, but Pocketpair now has 5 million of us prodding and poking to see what breaks: hopefully it can keep on top of things. Until then, as if it needed saying, don't go around resetting your memory.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."