Following the gigantic release of Pocketpair’s new Pokemon-style survival game, Palworld, its developers have claimed that they’re receiving death threats, asking players to “write like human beings.”
Palworld. Sure, I thought the whole ‘Pokemon with guns’ thing would draw in some players – but not that many. The creature-collecting, chart-topping survival game has dwarfed the likes of Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam, and continues to climb hour upon hour. Step aside Keanu Reeves, goodbye Sarah Morgan – Palworld is the new behemoth on the block.
But, as someone who played far too many hours of it this weekend, I can say it’s pretty buggy. I’ve fallen through the floor a few times, been unable to collect some rare Palworld Pals because they’ve phased into terrain and gotten stuck, and, well, then there’s that guy in the image below who won’t sleep anywhere but in mid-air.
Palworld is apparently dealing with over 50,000 bug reports at the moment and, inexcusably, that frustration is seemingly being taken out on members of the development team.
Pocketpair community manager ‘Bucky’ claims that they have received “death threats” and “threats to the company” via direct message and email, and urges players to be “human beings.”
“Frantically working through all my DMs and emails! I promise!” they write in a January 21 post on X (formerly Twitter). “However, you’ll excuse me if I skip over the death threats, threats to the company and massively outlandish claims…
“If you’re capable of writing like an actual human being though, I’ll reply asap!” they conclude, with an outpouring of support coming from the comments section.
A second post, which has been machine-translated, comes from Takuro Mizobe, Pocketpair’s CEO. “Currently, we are receiving slanderous comments against our artists, and we are seeing tweets that appear to be death threats.
“I have received a variety of opinions regarding Palworld, but all productions related to Palworld are supervised by multiple people, including myself, and I am responsible for the production. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from slandering the artists involved in Palworld.”
While bugs and crashes may account for some of the threats, the majority are likely a result of the visual similarities between Pokemon and Palworld’s creature designs.
Mizobe has previously stated that he doesn’t “necessarily have to be particular about originality” and that “if there are good ideas in the world, [he will] pick them up.” Additionally, in the public sphere, Nintendo has remained silent on Palworld so far.