More Palworld’s are popping up (Picture: Pocketpair)
After Palworld was accused of ripping off Pokémon designs, the developer’s CEO has commented on the ‘many’ Palworld clones in development.
While Palworld’s huge overnight success has dwindled since it launched in January, it hasn’t stopped other developers from chasing the same goldmine.
Developed by Pocketpair, the open world survival game managed to surpass the peak Steam player counts of Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring when it originally released. Its success came with some controversy though, with many highlighting the similarities with Pokémon in its monster designs – prompting a response from The Pokémon Company itself.
While these plagiarism accusations have not amounted to anything since, Palworld’s blend of survival and monster-taming mechanics has become a format other studios are now trying to replicate, as shown by upcoming title Auroria.
Developed by Chinese studio Tianjin Wumai Technology, Auroria is a ‘cooperative sandbox game’ which essentially looks like Palworld in space, with tameable creatures and crafting gameplay. It’s believed to be published by Tencent, who are reportedly working on a number of mobile games inspired by Palworld.
The developer behind Palworld has now commented on the situation, where he shared an image from Auroria and described it as a ‘Palworld clone’.
In the Twitter post (translated by Automaton), Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe wrote: ‘Tencent is already making a Palworld clone game! In China, many companies are simultaneously developing mobile clones of Palworld, and the budgets are in the 10 billion yen-range, 10 times larger than Palworld’s… Next year, we might see many Genshin Impact-level creature (or bishojo) raising games. These are incredible times.’
Mizobe later clarified that he wasn’t ‘accusing’ Tencent of doing anything wrong by copying Palworld, but he was ‘surprised’ by the amount of clones in development.
In response to a report, he added: ‘To ‘accuse’ someone of something, means to say they are doing something wrong. I don’t think what Tencent is doing is wrong.
‘I’m proud that other companies want to make games like Palworld. The industry historically innovates when we borrow ideas from games we love. I’m surprised that many high-quality mobile games are already in development.’
While the borrowing sentiment is nice, some might raise an eyebrow over the suggestion that there’s any innovation in Palworld – which heavily draws from games like Ark: Survival Evolved and Rust, as well as Pokémon.
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As reported by Bloomberg, Tencent studios LightSpeed and TiMi are said to be developing two separate games inspired by Palworld. This comes after Tencent’s growth in its gaming division slowed down in 2023, with the company hoping to turn the situation around.
It remains to be seen whether Palworld itself, which is still in early access, will continue to have a sustainable level of success in the months to come. As noted on SteamDB, the game’s player base has already dropped dramatically from a peak of over 2 million in January to around 70,000 players in recent weeks.
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