As Palworld fails to escape Pokemon comparisons following new card game announcement, one dev agrees some folks are being a bit dramatic

Palworld.

Palworld designer and Pocketpair Publishing manager John 'Bucky' Buckley agrees that folks might be overreacting slightly to the newly announced Palworld Official Card Game amid the expected Pokemon comparisons and criticisms.

The Palworld Official Card Game was announced earlier this week – it's a physical trading card game that'll be launching in July – and while reactions appear to be largely positive, Bucky has already been firing back at some of the haters emerging online following the news. "At this point if you're still ranting about a game you supposedly don't like after two years then I'm thinking it's a you problem now… Go play something else," he previously wrote.

Largely, the criticisms in question come in the form of people comparing the franchise to Pokemon, which obviously also has its own thriving TCG alongside the creature-collecting RPGs at the center of the IP. In the wake of the card game news, some have claimed Palworld "entirely relies on Pokemon to thrive," with others calling it a "Pokemon ripoff." Amid the ongoing patent infringement lawsuit, some have also joked that Pocketpair is trying to "piss off Nintendo" with its latest announcement.

It may not surprise you to hear that Bucky disagrees with this notion. Sharing one fan's tweet pointing out that there are "numerous" franchises "with cards in the tcg market," and saying that "people are being dramatic about Palworld," Bucky has a one-word reply that speaks volumes: "Yes."

Yes https://t.co/BidJBzGntcJanuary 13, 2026

Pokemon certainly didn't invent the idea of trading card games, and there are plenty of others out there with ties to video games – there's the Final Fantasy TCG and the Digimon Card Game just to name a couple. Admittedly, it was somewhat inevitable that Palworld would find itself under further scrutiny given how the survival game was unofficially dubbed "Pokemon with guns" by so many, and – again – not to mention the lawsuit filed by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company alleging patent infringement with certain in-game mechanics.

For now, we'll just have to wait and see if the Palworld Official Card Game takes off – it's set to launch on July 30 this year.

"Something to consider for a hypothetical Palworld 2": Palworld dev responds to demands for terraforming, says it's impossible without a year of development and wiping all save files.