This weekend was a big one for Craftopia developer Pocket Pair and its survival sandbox Palworld, which made its early access debut to resounding success, massive sales, the usual launch problems, and some less-than-usual accusations of AI-powered plagiarism.
The game’s initial release was a massive hit from a purely numerical standpoint, with over 1M players in the opening moments of release and over 3M copies sold in the first 40 hours (5M in the first three days). Naturally this onrush of players has caused the usual suite of problems, as co-op connection issues sprang up as a result of the number of players trying to connect – a problem that was still happening as of this Sunday morning as player numbers kept climbing.
Perhaps the bigger problem Pocket Pair faces, however, is suspicion from players regarding its titular Pal designs, with many accusing Pocket Pair of using AI tools that rip off Pokemon designs that appear to take physical characteristics from Nintendo’s popular IP in order to create mish-mashed monsters.
Others are also calling out Pocket Pair’s adoption of AI to create one of its other games, Pocket Pair’s CEO’s apparent interest in AI, and a blog post from the studio from last Tuesday that claims Palworld’s 100 creatures were mostly made by a single grad student. That same blog also admits the game “was also created in a way that was far removed from ‘proper game development'” according to Google Translate; most of the blog references several “miracles” that saw its primarily amateur team come together.
In spite of these accusations, the game has so far earned a “Very Positive” user review aggregate; one player summarizes it as “American Pokemon: Survival Evolved, approved by the 2nd Amendment.”
#Palworld has sold over 4 million copies in only about 3 days!
Momentum has increased since yesterday, with the latest sales at 86,000 units per hour.
Thank you everyone for playing Palworld!
Please leave a review if you've been enjoying your time in Palworld!#Pocketpair pic.twitter.com/lTSLLiFHjc
— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) January 21, 2024
