Palworld Sells Over 8 Million Copies in a Mere 6 Days | MMORPG.com

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Palworld Sells Over 8 Million Copies in a Mere 6 Days | MMORPG.com

Pocket Pair, the developers of Palworld, have announced that their new survival creature collector has sold over eight million copies in just six days since release. 

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Angrakhan

Well, I'd call that a hit. Congrats to them on their success. I'm sure they're ecstatic.

Mensur

Dayim! The Pokemon Compnay must be angry :-P

Vagabondo

Mensur said:

Dayim! The Pokemon Compnay must be angry :-P

They have said they will "Investigate".

When it comes to money, everyone becomes angry.

cheyane

Investigate means they have bupkis. They would have already done something while this game was still developing and not released into early access. No way are their expensive lawyers sleeping on this so the only interpretation is they have no grounds. They can sue but it won't mean they will win and if they lose then it be far worse for Nintendo as other developers looking to build games off their ideas will be bolder.

Angrakhan

Well, I'm no lawyer but I will say that if Blizzard can get away with the literal billions of dollars they've made off the Warcraft and Starcraft franchises which are both direct ripoffs from the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k franchises without paying a dime to Games Workshop who owns the WH IP, then Nintendo will end up pounding sand on this.

Case in point:

Warhammer 40k space marine:



Starcraft 2 marine:




I mean come on they didn't even change the color of the armor.

samvenice

Meanwhile, TemTem is available for Nintendo Switch too.

End of the story.

Elidien_ga

Not tried it yet, but have it on Gamespass to do so.

ShinyFlygon

cheyane said:

Investigate means they have bupkis. They would have already done something while this game was still developing and not released into early access. No way are their expensive lawyers sleeping on this so the only interpretation is they have no grounds. They can sue but it won't mean they will win and if they lose then it be far worse for Nintendo as other developers looking to build games off their ideas will be bolder.

First, the lawsuit would be brought by The Pokémon Company, not Nintendo. No other Nintendo-exclusive IP could possibly be affected by this case.

Second, the plaintiff could not have made much money in a lawsuit before the defendant's game started selling. The most a lawyer would have done at that time would be to write a cease-and-desist letter. Now that the game has made tons of money, a large chunk of that can be taken by The Pokémon Company if it is decided that infringement actually occurred.

Third, they definitely have grounds. You see it all around you. Public perception (which is relevant in a case like this) indicates that the characters and mechanisms in the two games can be very easily confused, which speaks to Palworld's potential to negatively impact the market for legitimate Pokémon games.

JeroKane

Vagabondo said:

Mensur said:

Dayim! The Pokemon Compnay must be angry :-P

They have said they will "Investigate".

When it comes to money, everyone becomes angry.

They had to come out with that statement, because their overzealous fans were getting out of control on the internet, sending death threats to employees at Pocketpair.

Mensur

ShinyFlygon said:

cheyane said:

Investigate means they have bupkis. They would have already done something while this game was still developing and not released into early access. No way are their expensive lawyers sleeping on this so the only interpretation is they have no grounds. They can sue but it won't mean they will win and if they lose then it be far worse for Nintendo as other developers looking to build games off their ideas will be bolder.

First, the lawsuit would be brought by The Pokémon Company, not Nintendo. No other Nintendo-exclusive IP could possibly be affected by this case.

Second, the plaintiff could not have made much money in a lawsuit before the defendant's game started selling. The most a lawyer would have done at that time would be to write a cease-and-desist letter. Now that the game has made tons of money, a large chunk of that can be taken by The Pokémon Company if it is decided that infringement actually occurred.

Third, they definitely have grounds. You see it all around you. Public perception (which is relevant in a case like this) indicates that the characters and mechanisms in the two games can be very easily confused, which speaks to Palworld's potential to negatively impact the market for legitimate Pokémon games.

This makes sense to me.

cheyane

You cannot copyright the shapes of animals. Minor changes are enough to defeat the claim. It has to be exactly the same. The changes they made are enough to defeat a claim.

ValdemarJ

TPC/Game Freak are hot on infringers. A poke mod for Palworld has already been taken down, but Palworld itself has not. It doesn't make much sense to wait because the longer they do so, the more it signals their uncertainty about the infringement when they're so quick on every other one.

TPC/Game Freak don't have a poke game like this. Pocket Pair is also a Japanese company so TPC probably has to be careful how they tread or possibly face a backlash from Poke fans who have been asking for more than their last few games which feel like COD style rehashes. The best thing Game Freak could do right now is put all their money and resources into making a high quality Nintendo exclusive Poke alternative to Palworld. That would speak for itself.

From a consumer perspective the worst thing that could happen, I think, would be for Nintendo and/or TPC to buy PocketPair and pull their games off of PC and Xbox. For me that would be a step too far and would tread into antitrust territory.

cheyane

Some of the fans of pokemon have deliberately forged 3d meshes of the design to try and prove it was lifted from the pokemon counterparts.  Pathetic attempts. They manipulated the meshes to match but it was faked.

Talin

Having spent a few hours with PalWorld now, it is truly brilliant what they have done here. Sure the noise of whether the character models are too similar will be worked through by lawyers if needed, but it is the design elements that truly stand apart.

Pokémon games (which I love) are predicated on the concept that humans and Pokemon live in harmony and work together. You can see evidence in that all through the games in the background activities of NPCs, but the game itself has only really ever allowed you to go out and use Pokemon to fight other Pokemon, on both mundane and large scales of importance to the world.

In PalWorld I don’t need to be given a starter Pokemon to weaken a new Pal to catch it, I can hit it with a stick. Is that truly any more violent or humane than having a Pokemon claw/bite/burn another one? Doesn’t really matter to me personally, but is far more realistic.

My Pals are a part of my settlement and are assigned jobs in exchange for shelter, food, and companionship. This is so incredible satisfying because of how much this is missed in Pokemon. They have their own skills, traits, and abilities that can contribute to (and help defend) the settlement.

There’s still a lot they can and should do with the game to flesh it out, but it really does stand on its own quite well so far and can’t wait to see what’s next.

Scot

Not a game for me, but if they have done nothing illegal they should be allowed their success.

No court case announced though? This may follow what you see elsewhere; until the game, music etc has made a lot of money what's the point in taking them to court? Once they have made a wagonload, that's when you sue.

Brainy

Sick of these monopolies suing the small indie teams out of existence over nonsense.

How about when Pokemon releases its next game and steals all Palworlds popular mechanics, who will stick up for this little game.  Because I am certain thats about to happen I guarantee it.

Monopolies need innovate and make good products people like and stop trying to hide behind copyright laws.

DigDuggy

meh, initial sales don't really say anything.  In a month or 2, we'll see whether it may or may not be worth looking at.  Good for them, that they got that for sure, but a lot of games have had mad sales, then a wicked plunge in everything.

Brainy

DigDuggy said:

meh, initial sales don't really say anything.  In a month or 2, we'll see whether it may or may not be worth looking at.  Good for them, that they got that for sure, but a lot of games have had mad sales, then a wicked plunge in everything.

Its obvious this game will plunge.

1) There is only so many customers that would even be interested in this product
2) Most customers are casual, I doubt more than 50% have ever spent more than 25 hours in any game.

I just started this game last night, after 1 hour I had an achievement that less than 50% of the people completed, and all I did was follow the questline.

So with big sales will come big drops. 

I think the real question is what this game will look like after its 1st paid expansion, can it get anywhere close to its initial success.

cameltosis

I've been trying out this game on my bro's gamepass.

It's a blatent ripoff. There's nothing truly original in this game. In fact, Eurogamer had an article on it the other day, including an interview with the dev, and the dev outright said its a ripoff. Not just of pokemon.

I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but it was something like:

"I want people to play my games. So, I looked around at what gamers were enjoying in a bunch of different genres and put all the best bits into my game. Why would I waste time trying to be original?"

There's bits of pokemon. There's bits of Zelda. There are bits of Ark. There's bits of satisfactory.

Despite the lack of originality, I think they've done a reasonable job putting all those bits together. For me, the "hook" was building a big base with lots of automation from my pals. I enjoyed watching them cutting trees, mining ore, farming berries, crafting arrows and taking time off in the hot tub. It was a nice mix of creativity and optimisation problems :-).

Worst bit for me was the combat.

Brainy

cameltosis said:

It's a blatent ripoff. There's nothing truly original in this game. In fact, Eurogamer had an article on it the other day, including an interview with the dev, and the dev outright said its a ripoff. Not just of pokemon.

I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but it was something like:

"I want people to play my games. So, I looked around at what gamers were enjoying in a bunch of different genres and put all the best bits into my game. Why would I waste time trying to be original?"

There's bits of pokemon. There's bits of Zelda. There are bits of Ark. There's bits of satisfactory.

I think that its smart to take the best of everything.  Thats what makes it unique.  Thats actually innovative LOL.

Whats not innovative is taking the worst parts of games, which seems to be the norm for new MMO's.

Scot

Brainy said:

cameltosis said:

It's a blatent ripoff. There's nothing truly original in this game. In fact, Eurogamer had an article on it the other day, including an interview with the dev, and the dev outright said its a ripoff. Not just of pokemon.

I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but it was something like:

"I want people to play my games. So, I looked around at what gamers were enjoying in a bunch of different genres and put all the best bits into my game. Why would I waste time trying to be original?"

There's bits of pokemon. There's bits of Zelda. There are bits of Ark. There's bits of satisfactory.

I think that its smart to take the best of everything.  Thats what makes it unique.  Thats actually innovative LOL.

Whats not innovative is taking the worst parts of games, which seems to be the norm for new MMO's.

Taking from the best from the rest of the genre is par the course for gaming, if you can do that well you have still should be applauded in my eyes. I say that because it is not easy to do, you can't just put throw everything you have seen that's good in and expect it to work. Think of the games we have seen where people say "There's loads to do but it does not seem to fit together". So if they have got all the disparate elements to gel together that's an achievement.

kitarad

Isn't that what WoW did and became successful . Base ideas from Everquest, instanced dungeons, mail boxes and auction house from FFXI and mounts from Anarchy Online to name some. I'm sure they also pilfered more ideas from Dark Age of Camelot & Anarchy Onine. They became huge because they cleverly took the best from other games.

Everyone is asking for cross  platform but forget that FFXI was the first game to offer PC and console cross platform gameplay. Nowadays this means mobile and PC   

Aeander

Brainy said:

DigDuggy said:

meh, initial sales don't really say anything.  In a month or 2, we'll see whether it may or may not be worth looking at.  Good for them, that they got that for sure, but a lot of games have had mad sales, then a wicked plunge in everything.

Its obvious this game will plunge.

1) There is only so many customers that would even be interested in this product
2) Most customers are casual, I doubt more than 50% have ever spent more than 25 hours in any game.

I just started this game last night, after 1 hour I had an achievement that less than 50% of the people completed, and all I did was follow the questline.

So with big sales will come big drops. 

I think the real question is what this game will look like after its 1st paid expansion, can it get anywhere close to its initial success.

The real question is how much it needs to. Everything drops off, and no one was under any illusions that it will keep selling hundreds of thousands of copies a day for months.

If they keep 10% of their playerbase longterm, that's still huge.

Brainy

kitarad said:

Isn't that what WoW did and became successful . Base ideas from Everquest, instanced dungeons, mail boxes and auction house from FFXI and mounts from Anarchy Online to name some. I'm sure they also pilfered more ideas from Dark Age of Camelot & Anarchy Onine. They became huge because they cleverly took the best from other games.

Exactly.  I honestly dont understand why games dont always take the best ideas then build on those.

New innovative ideas are not always good.  MMO's have been innovating money grabs, loot boxes, cash shops ect... I dont think that was good for customers.

I had a conversation with Lead Dev of embers after many posts that brought up how they had this one stupid mechanic that most people didnt like and he said wanted to keep the mechanic in his game because its what made them different from everyone else.

What a moronic concept, to keep something unique even if its hated.

Fun ideas are more important than new ideas.

If they are going to add something to the game new/different, the first thing Devs should ask themselves, is if the customers would actually want it.  

cameltosis

Brainy said:

kitarad said:

Isn't that what WoW did and became successful . Base ideas from Everquest, instanced dungeons, mail boxes and auction house from FFXI and mounts from Anarchy Online to name some. I'm sure they also pilfered more ideas from Dark Age of Camelot & Anarchy Onine. They became huge because they cleverly took the best from other games.

Exactly.  I honestly dont understand why games dont always take the best ideas then build on those.

New innovative ideas are not always good.  MMO's have been innovating money grabs, loot boxes, cash shops ect... I dont think that was good for customers.

Blizzard's whole business model was / is taking fun ideas from niche genres and then polishing them up for the masses. It's a successful strategy as long as they have innovative ideas to steal. When they run out of stuff to steal, Blizz has shown itself incapable of being successfully innovative on their own.

The issue with Palworld (for some) is they haven't taken the next step. They haven't innovated on anything. They haven't polished up anything for the masses. It's a straight up copy'n'paste with minor changes to avoid copyright stuff.

In addition, it felt like (to me) that they've actually dumbed down some of the stuff. Building is less detailed and creative than, say, Enshrouded. Combat is worse than most action combat games. The automation is definitely way shallower than games like Satisfactory or factorio.

Don't get me wrong, I still think Palworld has done a good job selecting the different mechanics that they want to stitch together. The pacing of the game also felt good to me during my short stint, not once did I wonder "what should i do next" because the game was always giving me goals to aim for. 

I just worry about more long-term play. If you've played any of the other games that Palworld has ripped off then you've probably already played better versions of those mechanics and already understand how Palworld works. I think this will lead to getting bored quicker.