Pokémon Company to investigate the popular "Pokémon with guns" game

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In an era where big video games releases can require a decade’s worth of work and budgets in the hundreds of millions, a small company in Japan has turned up out of nowhere to usurp the competition with a simple idea: Pokémon with guns. 

With the Pokémon Company now making clear its intention to "investigate", will this game whether the storm of its own popularity? 

Available via an early version on PC, Palworld was launched just a week ago and has already exploded in popularity. Set in an open-world environment called the Palpagos Islands, players direct their characters to survive by collecting food and building tools, including their homes.

So far, so much like many of the open-world games that have defined the last decade, from Minecraft to the two most-recent Legend of Zelda instalments. What’s got the gaming world in a huff though is one final key dynamic.

Also roaming around the Palpagos Islands are hundreds of Pals – creatures with unique sets of abilities that you can capture and use in fights against the many threats of Palworld. An online mode allows groups of up to 32 Pal Tamers to play against each other.

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It’s these Pals creatures that have given Palworld the nickname “Pokémon with guns”. The creatures featured are certainly reminiscent of those in Pokémon, with the aforementioned firearms added. 

In just three days, Palworld has sold more than five million copies and became the number one most streamed game on Twitch.

At its peak, Palworld has recorded over 1.8 million concurrent players, causing issues for the servers – an indication that the game’s success has far exceeded the developers’ expectations.

All of this has happened before the game is fully available in its final release. The version that people are playing is an early access game on PC with a single-player only version available on Xbox.

The sudden success of the game has put the spotlight on its company Pocket Pair.

Palworld is Japanese game developer Pocket Pair’s second wide release following its world survival project Craftopia. That too had similarities to games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but the addition of collectable fighting creatures is unique to Palworld.

The Pokémon Company has now put out a statement in response to the popularity of Palworld: "We have not granted any permission for the use of Pokémon intellectual property or assets in that game." 

"We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon. We will continue to cherish and nurture each and every Pokémon and its world, and work to bring the world together through Pokémon in the future."

Don McGowan, a lawyer who previously worked for the Pokémon Company has said that: “This looks like the usual ripoff nonsense that I would see a thousand times a year when I was chief legal officer of Pokémon. I’m just surprised it got this far.”

Monster hunting games are not exclusively the property of Pokémon. Other games including the Digimon and Monster Hunter franchise have used similar dynamics. Though there are certainly enough similarities to cause the wider games industry to adorn Palworld with its nickname.

Pocket Pair CEO Takuro Mizobe has vaguely responded to questions about his creative vision and choice to create a game borrowing from many other established game mechanics. “I don’t [have a creative vision]. I just want to make a game people like,” he said.

Furthermore, when asked why the game features guns alongside the cutesy aesthetic, his answer was pragmatic. “Americans like to shoot things,” Mizobe said, and the American market was important.