Palworld: The Game That Shouldn't Work But Does
There's a game that broke every rule in the book and got away with it. Pocketpair's Palworld launched in January 2024 into Early Access on Steam, and within the first month, it had moved over 25 million copies. That number is not a typo.
I've been covering indie games since 2016. I've seen viral hits come and go. Palworld is different. The game is still pulling 50,000 to 80,000 concurrent players on Steam nearly two years after launch. For an Early Access survival game from a mid-sized Japanese studio, that's unheard of.
Pocketpair doesn't have a PR team in the traditional sense. Takuro Mizobe, the CEO, posts directly on X. The company's communication style is, to put it mildly, unconventional. When Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed a patent infringement lawsuit in September 2024, Mizobe's public response was brief and almost casual. The lawsuit is still ongoing as of this writing.
I should probably address the elephant in the room.
The Pokémon Thing
Yes, the Pals look like Pokémon. Some of them look a lot like Pokémon. Anubis is Lucario with Egyptian accessories. Verdash is basically Quaquaval. The internet made hundreds of side-by-side comparison images within days of launch.
Here's the thing. I've put 200+ hours into Palworld across three saves. I've also played every mainline Pokémon game since Red and Blue in 1998. They do not feel like the same game. Not even close.
Pokémon is a turn-based JRPG with creature collection. Palworld is an open-world survival crafting game where the creatures happen to do your factory labor. You can give a Pal an assault rifle. You can butcher Pals for meat. The tone is completely different.
The legal question is about patents, not copyright. Specifically, Nintendo is targeting gameplay mechanics related to throwing spheres to capture creatures while riding other creatures. We won't know the outcome until the courts decide. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not going to speculate.
My main base on my second playthrough, around 80 hours in. The spaghetti logistics here got out of control.
What Palworld Actually Is
The game drops you on an island with nothing. You punch trees. You craft tools. You build a base. This part is standard survival game stuff. Ark, Rust, Valheim, you've seen it before.
The Pals change everything.
Creature Automation
You capture Pals using spheres. Each Pal has work suitability ratings. Foxparks can kindle fires. Cattiva can transport items. Penking can cool things down.
You assign Pals to your base, and they perform tasks automatically. Mining, logging, farming, cooking, crafting. The Pals do the work.
Real-Time Combat
The combat is real-time third-person shooter mechanics. You have guns. Your Pals fight alongside you.
Boss fights require actual positioning and dodging. It's not deep by action game standards, but it's functional and sometimes genuinely tense.
This loop is genuinely addictive. I lost an entire weekend in February 2024 optimizing my ore processing setup. My partner had to physically take my mouse away at 3 AM.
Catching Jetragon took me four hours and about 50 Legendary Spheres. Worth it.
The Updates
Pocketpair has been pushing content updates consistently. Sakurajima update in June 2024 added a new island, new Pals, new bosses. Feybreak update in late 2024 brought more endgame content. The team is small, maybe 40 people total, and they're shipping faster than studios three times their size.
The Xbox and Game Pass launch happened simultaneously with Steam Early Access. This was a big deal. Game Pass exposure drove a huge chunk of the initial player surge. Microsoft took a bet on an unknown quantity, and it paid off for both parties.
Dedicated servers were rough at launch. The netcode had issues. Duplication glitches ran rampant for the first few weeks. Most of that is fixed now. Playing on a private server with friends is the best way to experience the game. Public servers are still a mess of griefers and abandoned bases.
The Price
Old-School Business Model
$29.99 USDPalworld is $29.99 USD. It has been $29.99 since launch. No major sales. No price drops. Pocketpair hasn't needed to discount the game because it keeps selling at full price.
There are no microtransactions. No battle pass. No paid DLC yet. Everything released so far has been free updates. The business model is old-school. You pay once, you get the game, you get the updates. I don't know how long this will last. Pocketpair has mentioned potential paid expansions in the future.
For comparison, Ark: Survival Evolved launched at $29.99 and has since accumulated over $150 worth of paid DLC and a $49.99 sequel that requires repurchasing content. Palworld's value proposition is straightforward.
At 200 hours played, I've paid about 15 cents per hour of entertainment. My Elden Ring cost-per-hour is around 50 cents. My Baldur's Gate 3 is about 35 cents. Palworld is, by this dumb metric I just made up, my best gaming investment of the past two years.
Who This Game Is For
If you bounced off survival games because of the grind, Palworld might change your mind. The Pal automation removes the worst parts. You're not manually hitting rocks for six hours. You're managing a workforce of creatures who hit rocks for you.
If you wanted Pokémon to grow up with you, this scratches that itch in a weird way. It's not wholesome. It's kind of messed up, actually. But it's engaging in a way that recent Pokémon games haven't been for me.
If you need polished, finished products, wait. The game is still Early Access. Bugs exist. Balance is inconsistent. The story is basically nonexistent. Pocketpair is building the plane while flying it.
I started my third save last month with fresh eyes. The core loop still holds up. The early game is better paced than I remembered. The mid-game base building remains the highlight. The late game is still thin, but Feybreak helped.
The new Feybreak area. I died here a lot.
The Lawsuit Situation
I need to mention this because it's ongoing and relevant. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed suit in September 2024. The case is in Japanese courts. Pocketpair has hired legal representation. No preliminary injunction has been issued. The game remains on sale worldwide.
Buyer Considerations
Some people are waiting to buy until the legal situation resolves. That's reasonable. Some people refuse to buy on principle because of the design similarities. Also reasonable. I bought the game in January 2024, before the lawsuit, and I don't regret the purchase. Your ethics may differ from mine.
The lawsuit specifically targets patent infringement, not copyright. This is an important distinction. Pocketpair's character designs, even if inspired by Pokémon, are not the subject of the legal action as far as public filings indicate.
I'll update this section if anything changes. As of November 2025, status quo.