„This was a very sad day.” Hit survival game devs address Nintendo lawsuit and recall Palworld’s insane launch

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During the current Game Developers Conference, a discussion took place with John Buckley, a member of the renowned Pocketpair studio, recognized for Palworld. He reminisced about the chaotic initial release of the game during early access and shared insights on how a legal action by Nintendo impacted their company.

  1. He stated that the atmosphere in the studio is very friendly and it helped the team to cope with many difficulties. After the release, Palworld reached a record activity level of 2.1 million players playing simultaneously on Steam. The developers’ lack of preparation is best demonstrated by the fact that initially, only one employee was responsible for the servers.
  2. The popularity of the game shocked the creators. Originally, they assumed that it would mainly arouse interest in Japan. In truth, it turned into a worldwide sensation. The devs claim that they don’t really have an idea why Palworld has achieved much greater success than the team’s previous titles. As Buckley stated:

Often, people wonder about us and ask questions like, “Why are you so popular? What led to this attention?” Frankly, we can’t answer those questions. If we understood the secret recipe, we would certainly repeat it, but alas, we remain clueless regarding the events that brought us here.

Additionally, Buckley admitted that the day Nintendo filed a lawsuit against their studio was quite demoralizing, since the team members at Pocketpair are avid enthusiasts of the Pokemon series.

  1. The creators were also afraid of the reaction of the most hardcore Nintendo fans, so they decided to hire security guards for the office.
  2. Nintendo accuses the developers of Palworld of violating several patents. So far, this has only concerned Japan, but recently the corporation has also acquired one in the USA. Buckley didn’t directly tackle this issue, but, notably, updates to Palworld have significantly altered several aspects of the game, seemingly to move its solutions away from the mentioned patents. For instance, Pals are no longer summoned by throwing a “pokeball” and simply appear next to the player.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-56410

In January 2024, the game known as Palworld became available for play on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Approximately eight months later, it was also released on the PlayStation 5.

  1. Palworld on Steam

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2025-03-19 13:32