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The Pokémon Company has finally made an official statement regarding Palworld, saying, “We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe intellectual property rights related to Pokémon.”
While The Pokémon Company doesn’t specifically mention Palworld by name, it’s very clear This statement is a response to the incredible success the survival game is experiencing (8 million copies sold in less than six days!) and to claims that many of Palworld’s friends are too similar to existing Pokémon.
“We have received many inquiries about another company’s game launching in January 2024,” The Pokemon Company wrote. “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 action to address any acts that infringe intellectual property rights related to Pokémon. We will continue to appreciate and nurturing each and every Pokémon and its world, and working to unite the world through Pokémon in the future.”
Prior to this statement, Palworld developer Pocketpair insisted that its game is much closer to games like Ark Survival Evolved and Vanaheim than it is to Pokémon. Additionally, the team revealed that they have been receiving death threats since the game was released on January 19.
In an interview with Automaton, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe shared that the team passed the legal review and that no action had been taken against the company for infringement.
“We make our games very seriously and have no intention of infringing on other companies’ intellectual property,” Mizobe said.
The Pokémon Company has already started taking action against modders who have replaced Palworld Pals with Pokémon, and Nexus Mods has even said it will not host Pokémon mods for Palworld out of fear of Nintendo’s legal team.
All of these issues aside, Palworld is without a doubt a huge success and we here at IGN call it “Excellent” in its current state.
“Even in its Early Access state, Palworld is hilariously irreverent, has a surprising amount of content and deep survival mechanics, and is absurdly hard to put down,” IGN’s Travis Northup wrote in his review of Palworld. “It’s impossible to overlook how blatantly it takes ideas and designs from Pokémon, it has some unsurprising bugs and performance issues, and the job of keeping your base’s supplies maxed out needs a bit of fine-tuning, but when you’re riding the back of a flying dragon while shooting a blue duck with an assault rifle, most of those imperfections disappear completely.
“This is already one of my favorite survival games and I’m incredibly excited to see how it evolves.”
For more information, check out our in-depth analysis of whether it’s fair to call Palworld a Pokémon copy and the roadmap for Palworld in future updates along with PvP, raid bosses, and new islands.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter. @AdamBankhurst and in Twitch.