Developer Pocketpair has signed a deal with Krafton to bring Palworld to mobile platforms.
krafton – who is perhaps best known for his work on PUBG – said that this deal will allow the company to “faithfully reinterpret and implement the main fun elements of the original for the mobile environment.”
Krafton subsidiary PUBG Studios will be responsible for developing the mobile version of Pocketpair's monster-catching survival game, the company said.
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Before its initial release, many dubbed Palworld 'Pokémon with guns' due to its similarities to Nintendo's creature-catching game. It was the first big hit of 2024, surpassing 2 million simultaneous players on Steam in January. It was only the second game to achieve this, the other being PUBG, quite appropriate for this article.
Palworld made its debut on PlayStation last week, following a period of Xbox console exclusivity. However, it has not yet been released for PS5 in Japan. While Sony and Pocketpair did not comment further on the reason for this at the time, many assumed it had something to do with the fact that Nintendo is currently suing Pocketpair for patent infringement.
After learning of Nintendo's lawsuit, Pocketpair said it did not know which patents it had apparently infringed. However, reports have since suggested that it is a patent related to the way players throw Pokéballs. However, shortly after its launch on PlayStation, an intellectual property expert claimed that it was “extremely plausible” that Nintendo crafted its patent applications specifically to target Palworld.