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

At the ongoing Game Developers Conference, a panel was held featuring John Buckley, who is part of the Pocketpair studio, famous for Palworld. He recalled the insane early access launch of the game and discussed how the lawsuit from Nintendo affected the 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:

Buckley also acknowledged that the day Nintendo sued the studio was quite disheartening, as the developers at Pocketpair are huge fans 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.

Palworld was released on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in January 2024. Eight months later, the game also hit the PS5.

1. Palworld on Steam

Palworld

2026

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