Palworld is the first major viral phenomenon of 2024, at least as far as the world of electronic entertainment is concerned. This survival video game developed by the Japanese studio Pocket Pair – and accused of being a plagiarism of titles like Pokémon – has been available since last Friday for PC and Xbox and in its first three days on sale it has managed to sell more than 4 million of units, as revealed by those responsible.
This is not the only surprising figure for what is, without a doubt, the game of the moment. According to SteamDB, a website that provides usage data for the Steam computer video game platform, Palworld is already among the five titles with the highest number of simultaneous players. Up to 1,291,967 users have played this title at the same time during the weekend of its launch, a figure that is above what Cyberpunk 2077 achieved and that could be surpassed if it maintains the streak of recent days.
Its creators have stated on Twitter that this is the "highest number of simultaneous players of any paid game in the history of Steam", but this data is not true, since the action game PUBG reached its maximum (3,257,248 simultaneous players ) when it was still a paid game.
Beyond the dance of numbers, what is clear is that Palworld is being a true phenomenon and a large part of this success may be due to the controversy that has surrounded this title since it was announced. When its first images were published in 2021, attention was quickly drawn to the way it mixed elements of the popular Pokémon series with mechanics closer to action games, resulting in a game much further removed from the tone for all audiences of the franchise. starring Pikachu.
That “Pokémon with guns” seemed more like a meme than a product developed for commercial purposes. However, a few years later it is taking off – and it is only in early access, so it is not finished yet.
The title developed by Pocket Pair has been accused of plagiarizing Pokémon due to the tremendous resemblance to the game from the Japanese studio Game Freak. The similarities are more than evident and range from the general dynamics of the game, consisting of capturing a series of adorable creatures that wander around the environment, to the design of these creatures themselves, which in some cases is a more than obvious copy. In fact, some users have been comparing the appearance of these creatures from both games for days through social networks and the similarity of some of them is not hidden at all.
Another controversy that is surrounding Palworld has to do with the use of AI. As reported by the media VideoGamesChronicle, the studio's previous games, such as Art Impostor, revolved entirely around AI image generation. And although the use of this technology is increasingly widespread in the development of video games, various users have accused the studio that it is perhaps due to the use of these tools that many of the creatures look so similar to the one in the series. games owned by Nintendo.
In reality, Palworld not only takes ideas from Pokémon, but from many other games. The general dynamics of the game are a carbon copy of what can be found in survival simulators like Rust. Likewise, many elements of the interface and the world itself are clearly “inspired” by titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Plagiarism in video games has existed since the beginning of this cultural industry. Since Atari launched the classic Pong in 1972 and it was copied endlessly by other companies, there have been examples of plagiarism everywhere in this competitive sector. Without going any further, titles as popular as Candy Crush or Fortnite are copies of other previous titles that proposed exactly the same game dynamics. In any case, the fact that it is not something new does not mean that this type of plagiarism is not a reprehensible practice. In the case of Palworld, the copy of Pokémon is evident, but neither The Pokémon Company nor Nintendo have yet made a move.
