Pocketpair

Pocketpair is a developer and publisher.

Pocketpair Webpage

A Japanese video game development and publishing studio, Pocketpair has been around since 2015, but had to wait nine years for its first major hit, which came with the Early Access release of Palworld. The studio creates and distributes games across PC, console, and mobile devices.

Pocketpair's History

First projects

The company began operations in April 2015. The team, led by Takuro Mizobe, was headquartered in Tokyo. The studio delivered its first major project in 2018. The card game Overdungeon entered Early Access on Steam in November and was released in its full version less than a year later. The title received mostly positive reviews.

Pocketpair's next game,?Craftopia, entered Early Access on PC in September 2020 and was released on Xbox consoles a year later. The game blends survival gameplay with features from action-adventure, hack-and-slash, and farming simulator genres. Its success allowed the team to focus on development in peace. Development, however, took so long that, before Craftopia's full release, Pocketpair had already launched other titles.

The first of these was the social game AI: Art Impostor, which launched on PC and mobile devices. Unlike the studio's previous projects, it went largely unnoticed, receiving only mixed reviews on Steam. Nevertheless, the team had no reason to worry, as they had a major project in the works.

Palworld's huge success

Palworld is a survival action game with RPG elements, often described as "Pokemon with guns" upon its announcement Like Pocketpair's previous titles, this game debuted in Early Access, launching on January 19th, 2024, for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Palworld's success was almost guaranteed, as it ranked high on Steam users' wishlists even before its release.

However, when Pocketpair's game went on sale, it immediately drew a massive wave of players. It took just eight hours for the game to reach one million buyers, and six days later, it had already sold eight million copies. Shortly afterward, Palworld became the second most popular game in Steam history by concurrent players, surpassing Counter-Strike 2. In theory, Pocketpair had to seize the opportunity and continue working on the game while interest was at its peak.

In practice, however, the studio faced numerous problems. Palworld was aptly described as "Pokemon with guns", and online, evidence surfaced suggesting that some of the creatures in the game were plagiarized. Eventually, The Pokemon Company itself issued a statement, announcing that it would review Palworld and investigate whether its intellectual property had been misused.

To make matters worse, players closely following Pocketpair's work began noticing similar "inspirations" in another title, with some arguing that Craftopia bore too much resemblance to the hit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Although Palworld reached 25 million players worldwide within a month of its release, its peak popularity on Steam occurred on January 27th, 2024, with over 2.1 million concurrent players. Since then, its active user base has steadily declined: in early February, it fell to over one million players, and by March, to around 100,000. Nevertheless, the developers had ambitious plans for the growth of their brand. In July 2024, Pocketpair joined forces with Sony Music Entertainment and Aniplex to create Palworld Entertainment, a company tasked with overseeing both the continued development of Palworld and the expansion of the brand.

At the end of July 2024, John Buckley, community manager at Pocketpair, addressed the game's decline, emphasizing that it was a normal and harmless process. Shortly thereafter, the studio's CEO, Takuro Mizobe, stated that the revenue from Palworld could enable them to create a game larger than any AAA project. Despite this, his team was not yet prepared for such ambitious development, so, according to Pocketpair's CEO, he plans to continue focusing on independent projects in the future.

Nintendo and The Pokemon Company file lawsuit

On September 18th, The Pokemon Company and Nintendo announced that they had filed a lawsuit against the Pocketpair team, accusing the creators of Palworld of infringing multiple patent rights. The companies, after a "detailed investigation", sought "protection against copyright infringement" and "reimbursement for the alleged damages".

In response to the allegations, the developers apologized to fans for any concerns or discomfort the situation may have caused, while noting that they would need to focus on matters unrelated to game development for some time. However, the developers pledged to do everything in their power to "ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas". Interestingly, just a few days later, on September 25th, Palworld launched in Early Access on PlayStation 5.

Returning to the lawsuit, in November 2024, Pocketpair revealed the patents that the Japanese giant had accused the studio of infringing. These patents concerned, among other things, the depiction of the process of catching and taming creatures, as well as the ability to ride them. Furthermore, it was revealed at the time that The Pokemon Company and Nintendo were each demanding 5 million yen (approximately 33,000 USD) in damages from Pocketpair for delays, as well as a halt to the sales of Palworld. Naturally, Pocketpair stated that it "intended to continue defending its position in the matter".

These complications did not stand in the way of Pocketpair's continued growth and development. It was announced in January 2025 that the studio had launched a new publishing division to provide support for independent game creators. The first production from Pocketpair Publishing was planned to be an untitled horror game by Surgent Studios, best known for Tales of Kenzera: ZAU.