Palworld has sparked a messy but fascinating debate about animal cruelty in games

Palworld, the survival game in which you recruit cute Pokémon-like creatures and make them fight or work, has been out for four days and is already a great success. On Monday morning, the Early Access version of the game reached over 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam, making it the most played game on the platform and the the third highest number of concurrent players on the platform of all time. The statistic doesn’t even include players who downloaded the game through Xbox Game Pass, meaning the overall active player base is likely much larger. According to the developer, Pocketpair, the game sold more than 5 million copies in three days.

The buzz has made Pocketpair an overnight sensation. But PalworldThe game’s release has brought with it quite a bit of controversy beyond the fact that it is clearly about Pokémon. If you are on the outside of the Palworld phenomenon (and the subsequent shitstorm), here’s how it all goes down.

Why is Palworld so popular?

Palworld grabbed the attention of Steam wishlists months ago with a compelling premise: what if Pokémon had weapons? But the game’s popularity at launch goes beyond its somewhat funny nature. As players discovered Friday and the weekend, Palworld combines gameplay elements from a variety of extremely popular games. For starters, it’s a survival simulation, following in the footsteps of Minecraft, Rapid, ValheimAnd Sons of the forest. Then the non-Pokémon is added.

For years, older Pokémon fans have asked for more adult versions of the game, but The Pokémon Company continues to stick to releasing kid-friendly games. In the past, other games have tried to satisfy fans’ desire for a fresh take on Pokémon; TameFor example, this allows players to experience Pokémon-like gameplay elements in an MMORPG setting. These past attempts never exploded, with player bases falling away after strong initial interest. PalworldThe game’s popularity could follow a similar trajectory, but it does meet demand from some older Pokémon fans looking for a “grown-up” version of the basic creature collecting concept. That, and the fact that Palworld actually has a fully functional multiplayer mode, which was missing from subsequent Pokémon games Scarlet And purple‘s co-op makes it an attractive download for casual players and a must-have for certain nostalgic Nintendo heads.

Is Palworld animal cruelty?

In PalworldTake your cute creatures called Pals and put them to work in your camp or let them fight against other Pals. It is of course up to you as a player to determine how you deal with the physical and ethical dilemmas associated with the gameplay. If you want, you can take good care of your pets and ensure that they stay relatively healthy. On the other hand, you can work your friends so hard that they develop health problems or die. You can also outright slaughter your friends, or turn them into an armed militia if you want. The range of possibilities, perhaps by design, has provoked the player base and its spectators – with some detractors of the game saying: it encourages animal cruelty.

Image: Bag pair

The game is definitely more graphic than games like Pokémon, as players swing bats or fire automatic weapons at the creatures to subdue them for capture. In the current version of the game, however, the animation itself isn’t particularly gruesome; it censors your character when they cut up another creature. Many video games contain violence against other people and creatures – Conan exiles have you broken human beings while forcing them to work for you – so it’s up to each person to decide what they are or are not comfortable with seeing and playing a game.

Did the Palworld developers use AI?

Some online have accused Pocketpair of “using AI” to generate elements in the game, although these claims appear to be unsubstantiated so far. Some of the feedback comes from another game: in 2022, the Pocketpair team created a game called AI: Art trickster which required players to use an AI art generator as part of playing the game, leading some people to wonder if similar technology was at work in Palworld. But Steam requires developers to identify whether it is a game was created using generative AI tools, and as of publishing, the game does not have that reveal on its Steam page. In addition, the team also wrote blog posts talking about it hiring an artist who designed “most” of the characters for the game.

Did Palworld plagiarize Pokémon?

The release of this game has many fans online thinking about the line between a work inspired by another game and a work that steals material. When does something pass the point of inspiration and reach a level where Pokémon are dropped? At the time of publication, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company International have not filed any lawsuits against Pocketpair for copyright infringement.

Still, this hasn’t stopped many fans online from pointing out instances where creatures in the game appear to take direct inspiration from Pokémon designs, and humans online have accused Pocketpair by stealing models directly from Pokémon. The situation has also sparked conversations about whether or not fans can would have to defend a litigious company like Nintendo.

Pocketpair has remained relatively silent on this issue. In a tweet, CEO of Pocketpair Takuro Mizobe responded to accusations of plagiarism by saying that “productions were related to Palworld are accompanied by several people,” said a tweet translated from Japanese to English by Google Translate. In a blog post shared on January 16the development team itself mentioned several influences on the game, such as the adventure survival game Ark: survival evolved and other automation games and real-time strategy games.