It's been a while since Palworld was taking, well, the world by storm. A rip-roaring 2 million concurrent players has simmered down to a humble-but-hearty 30,000 on average, with a recent leap to 90,000 at the time of writing owing to its recent major update. A continued success by any metric.
Still, part of that initial hullabaloo involved anger over Palworld's pals—who were, if you listened to the peanut gallery, either direct rip-offs of Pokémon or AI-generated slop. As I mentioned back in January, though, these were mostly based on sheer vibes and Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe being really excited about AI pokemon back in 2021 (which, in fairness, is pretty suspicious—but raised eyebrows aren't evidence).
