Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe has now called out Tencent for making a Palworld clone game in China and offered their thoughts on it.
The popularity of Palworld is no secret – the indie title shot to fame as soon as players started chaos with this “Pokemon with guns” title. The developers at Pocketpair have often shown their gratitude to the player community for the game’s popularity as well as added new content for free regularly.
Now usually with smaller indie games like these, clones are often to be found. Similarly, a Palworld clone is being developed by Chinese giant Tencent and Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe has called them out and other such developers in an X post.
テンセントが早速パルワールドのクローンゲーム作ってる！中国では各社が一斉にパルワールドのモバイル向けクローンを開発していて、しかも予算規模はパルワールドの10倍の100億円級・・・来年は原神クオリティのモンスター（または美少女）育成ゲームが大量にリリースされそう・・・すごい時代 pic.twitter.com/RKqLz2RGOH
— Takuro Mizobe | Palworld (@urokuta_ja) April 16, 2024
While sharing a screenshot of the game, Mizobe wrote (translated from Japanese), “Tencent is already making a Palworld clone game! In China, various companies are simultaneously developing mobile clones of Palworld, and the budget scale is about 10 billion yen, 10 times that of Palworld.”
He further continued, “It looks like there will be a ton of Genshin-quality monster (or girl) breeding games released next year. Amazing times.” From his post, it’s quite evident the Palworld boss is not happy about the replication of their hit indie game, however welcomes such innovation.
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Nevertheless, it’s understandable that bad ripoffs of almost every popular game can be found online, but when names of mega companies like Tencent are involved, it means serious business.
However several Palworld players have fired shots at Tencent too based on Mizobe’s claims, where one such player said, “After being accused of stealing from Pokemon, people are finally starting to copy you instead. The cycle is complete and you have truly made it.”
When Palworld was first released, many called it a Pokemon clone itself due to its similarity with the popular Nintendo title and some even alleged Pocketpair for stealing assets from the iconic franchise. However, devs at Pocketpair have continued to release their original Pals and features with consistent updates since the game grossed far more than its development costs.