Secrets of ‘Palworld’ Success: It’s Not Just ‘Pokémon With Guns’

The Pokémon Company recently announced a slew of upcoming titles for its long-running and incredibly lucrative video game franchise. But those games aren’t the reason for the Pokémon-related headlines over the past month. That honor goes to “Palworld,“ a survival-strategy game unofficially known as “Pokémon With Guns.”

Created by Japanese indie developer Pocketpair for PC and Xbox, the game allows the player to capture and befriend cartoon creatures known as Pals, which many argue bear more than a passing resemblance to a certain Pokémon. Some online detractors have even accused Pocketpair of lifting visual assets directly from the Pokémon games or using AI to create the Pals, citing the company’s heavy use of AI in its previous game “AI: Art Imposter.”

And “Palworld” isn’t the first Pocketpair game to be accused of skirting the IP line, as its previous game “Craftopia” drew comparisons to “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” upon its launch.

Pocketpair has denied any intentional copying but hasn’t commented specifically on the use of AI. The Pokémon Company, meanwhile, hasn’t committed to any potential legal action.

While the Pokémon connection is undoubtedly the biggest hook of “Palworld,” a new independent report by business analyst Anna Kerr notes the game potentially has enough original and winning factors to lead to long-term popularity and, legal intervention notwithstanding, provide an interesting case study for the gaming industry.

“We’re having an interesting start to the year for games, not just in terms of layoffs but also with the types of releases,” said Kerr, who has done business analysis and community management within the gaming industry for roughly a decade. “We don’t have as many AAA games released now compared to last year, so AA titles can better stand out.”

According to Kerr’s report, “Palworld” sold 15 million copies on PC game platform Steam in the six weeks since its release (with the first million units selling within the first eight hours). The game had over 2 million concurrent players on PC at its peak — the second-highest player count on Steam to date. On Xbox, roughly 10 million players have accessed “Palworld” via Xbox Game Pass.

But there are few franchises that compare to Pokemon’s enduring cultural dominance and ironclad brand recognition. Those with a passing knowledge of the brand will likely know what Pikachu looks like. More to the point, even though the games center around fighting monsters, Pokémon is unmistakably a family-friendly brand. Pokémon never die in battle; they faint, and they certainly don’t use guns.

Pocketpair seemingly knew subverting these well-established expectations around what Pokémon-like characters were allowed to do would gain the company maximum attention with a modest marketing budget. As a result, Kerr’s report notes that Pocketpair “identified the parts of the game that would call for the most conversation and highlighted that in their announcement trailer” and promotional materials — as in the guns, which aren’t actually available to players until later in the game.

That subversion is primarily why “Palworld” turned so many heads. But the game’s success particularly spotlights parts of the Pokémon fandom that Pokémon Company doesn’t reach with its official games, namely players who don’t own Nintendo consoles and older Pokémon fans who have outgrown the franchise’s reliable but simplistic gameplay formula and are disappointed by recent releases. It’s worth noting that a survey by Beta Hat found “Palworld” currently has more players in the 25-45 age group than the average PC or Xbox game.

“A Pikachu-like character holding a machine gun is something we’ve never seen in Pokémon games, so obviously the shock of that caught peoples’ attention,” said Kerr. “But additionally, the Pokémon games haven’t made many significant changes to their flagship titles in 20, 25 years. For fans who grew up with Pokémon that are looking for a more mature gaming experience, adapting that concept to a survival genre, especially since that genre is particularly popular, is not a far stretch.”

Beyond the Pokémon hook, Kerr argues “Palworld” has enough genuine substance to maintain player interest and stand out in a crowded gaming field. In terms of gameplay, it takes the conventional survival game loop — find food, collect and craft resources, fight threats, upgrade and expand, repeat — and adds elements including collecting and training the Pals, an upgradable skill tree for the player and the ability to automate food and resource production, putting a unique spin on the formula.

Perhaps most crucial to “Palworld” overcoming the “gimmick” label, Kerr argues, is that Pocketpair has mostly maintained the same team across all its titles — an increasing rarity in the gaming industry. In doing so, the company was able to take the experience and feedback from its survival game “Craftopia,” refine certain mechanics and apply those elements to “Palworld,” resulting in a more realized and satisfying game from the outset (also an increasing rarity).

“Pocketpair didn’t just make a Pokémon rip-off — they still developed an interesting survival game,” Kerr says. “ ’Palworld’ wouldn't have continued to do well if it failed to meet the standard expectations of the survival genre. So the fact that Pocketpair had just made ‘Craftopia’ and were able to borrow and learn from that significantly benefited the game’s appeal.”

As for where “Palworld” goes from here, player count has decreased since its 2.1 million peak, but it’s still bringing in an average of 200,000 players on Steam, placing it in the realm of bigger-budget and well-established survival games such as “Valheim” and “ARK: Survival Evolved.”

Kerr thinks the potential long-term success of “Palworld” may spark some shifts in the industry, be that an increased willingness to apply concepts from established IP to original projects or increased investing in indie and AA titles in a turbulent gaming market — assuming, of course, that the Pokémon Company doesn’t shut down “Palworld” (though that’s not likely).

“What happens next depends on if ‘Palworld’ is sued into extinction,” Kerr notes. “But if they aren't, I think there’s a chance we’ll see developers looking at broader concepts in established IP and seeing how they can freshen up stagnant games in interesting new ways.”

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