Pushing Buttons: Why Palworld leaves me cold

I'm not here to start a moral panic about this violent survival game. Its transgressions are simply that there's nothing here I haven't seen before

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The biggest story of the year so far in games has been Palworld, the Pokemon-with-guns" early access game that broke and rebroke concurrent player records on PC. It's showing a few signs of being unsustainable, as those player numbers have dropped off in recent weeks and the developers reveal the eye-watering cost of keeping servers online for so many people (almost $6m a year), but it's still in with a shot of being 2024's biggest game in terms of pure revenue.

There's something a little unsavoury about Palworld that has other developers and critics wrinkling their noses. It's not just the ick of turning guns on creatures that are, unlike Minecraft's blocky animals, designed to look cute. Its character designs are so close to Pokemon's that it has sparked allegations of plagiarism, with some 3D models of the game's creatures aligning improbably closely with those from recent Pokemon games. (The Pokemon Company is investigating, while Pocketpair's CEO, Takuro Mizobe, said that Palworld cleared legal reviews", and that the studio has absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies".) Its lead developer has also been cheerfully outspoken about using AI tools, which is a super-unpopular opinion among everyone who works on games in 2024, except certain company executives.