It’s no big secret that the Pocketpair team found itself under fire following the release of Palworld in January 2024. It was the biggest success story in the gaming world in recent years, but allegations of AI usage and plagiarism ran riot, grinding down the team at Pocketpair from the moment Palworld hit the market.
In a recent interview, Pocketpair’s John ‘Bucky’ Buckley took a deep dive into the impact this harassment on social media had on the development team, right up to the CEO level.
‘Death Threats and Stuff’
In a recent segment with GamesRadar, Bucky explained how tough it was in the early days of Palworld. The skyrocketing, sensational title pulled in millions of players in a matter of days, pushing up the charts with reckless abandon and ease. It became an overnight success for Pocketpair, and the tens of millions of dollars came pouring in.
But it wasn’t all a cause for celebration, as Bucky said:
There were a lot of very upsetting moments in those first couple of months, not just the accusation stuff, but the death threats and stuff like this.
I can’t remember exactly how many times now, but two or three times, we really tried to push back on the AI stuff specifically. And it was just fueling this fire.
Bucky stressed that the team wanted to clap back against social media trolls, but they refrained from doing so. At one point, a ‘huge statement’ was generated to cover everything, but it was ultimately dropped, and the team decided to go silent on the matter.
That generated more claims that the studio had ‘gone quiet’ and that Palworld was ‘already dying’.
The company’s CEO, Takuro Mizobe, wasn’t safe from the online tirades:
Our CEO was under attack in Japan like every day. Japanese media was on every tweet he’s ever made. We just all kind of – fed up is the wrong word, but we were just all so tired of it. For a couple months, we went quiet.
Palworld has since dropped off the charts but remains a popular game that’s still striving to deliver content updates to a dedicated audience. Pocketpair has since opened a publishing arm, but the team has set expectations by suggesting that Palworld’s success probably won’t be replicated by the games it releases.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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