Palworld Devs Says They Have Received Death Threats Amid Pokémon 'Rip-Off' Claims

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is almost here, and its devs are saying it's one of "the most well-optimized games" they've ever worked on.

Palworld's developers are still being harassed, with the developers receiving «unhinged threats» from people online. While it's been an incredible sales success, Palworld has certainly not been without controversy. Some Pokemon fans in particular have taken issue with the game, allegedly targeting its developers with death threats because they think that it has plagiarized Game Freak's Pokemon designs.

In response to player concerns, a Palworld developer has assured fans that the future PvP mode will avoid falling into the same pitfalls as other survival multiplayer titles such as Rust. These concerns were sparked by the release of Palworld’s roadmap that detailed future features such as new islands, Pals, bosses, and more, as well as the controversial potential addition of a PvP mode.

A new update has been rolled out for the Steam version of Pocketpair’s survival and crafting game Palworld, which, as well as a couple of bug fixes, contains “countermeasures against various cheats and exploits.”

Palworld is getting PvP, raid bosses, and new islands in future updates, developer Pocketpair has said.

Palworld – the brand new, sort-of-Pokémon, open-world, third-person, shooting, action adventure, crafting, survival, animal collecting, and other popular buzzwords – game launched on Steam and Xbox on January 19. It immediately blew up, selling six million copies in four days and instantly becoming a force to be reckoned with while simultaneously opening the floodgates of discourse surrounding intellectual property theft in video games. Since being revealed two years ago, Palworld – created by a developer named Pocketpair – has been commonly referred to as “Pokémon with guns” by anyone who has looked at it for more than three seconds. But as people dig deeper, they are discovering that Palworld is both a game that does enough to distance itself from Pokémon mechanically while also being a little too close for comfort to Pokémon artistically. So let’s dig into this controversy and figure out exactly what’s happening with Palworld.

The producer of Palworld and CEO of developer Pocketpair, Takuro Mizobe, has reiterated that the Palworld developers “have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies.” 

is undeniably similar to , but whether it's a total rip-off is another question entirely. Like, it's a title that revolves around catching cute and dangerous creatures, and using them to achieve various goals. While this kind of gameplay wasn't necessarily invented by, and isn't even unique to, the iconic series is the first thing that comes to mind on hearing "." That was only worsened by early previews of, which showed off Pal-catching devices and animations that strongly resemble Poké Balls.

The CEO of Palworld developer Pocketpair has stated that the game's artists have received death threats, and has asked that people stop directing messages towards studio staff.

The Palworld developers are reportedly receiving death threats, seemingly over the similarities between the game's creature designs and Pokemon. Palworld combines Minecraft-style survival mechanics with the thrill of monster catching to great effect. The game has been a massive success out of the gate, selling over 5 million copies despite being early access and readily available to play through Xbox Game Pass.

With the Xbox version of smash hit Palworld lagging behind the Steam version in terms of features and updates, developer Pocketpair has moved to explain the situation.

Pocketpair’s Palworld is doing very well, ranking third in Steam’s all-time peak concurrent player records and selling over five million copies in three days. However, those playing on Xbox Series X/S have noticed significant differences from the Steam version. As pointed out by Windows Central, you can’t name your character or rename pals, the crafting is slower and more.