After plenty of online speculation around whether it would actually happen, The Pokémon Company has released a statement about "another company's game" released in January 2024. And we can say what we're all thinking: Palworld.

Though the company doesn't name Palworld or Pocketpair outright, the assumption is that's what this statement is about, unless Prince of Persia has a super-secret stage I don't know about. But the statement says The Pokémon Company has received "many inquiries" regarding another company's game released in January 2024, and TPC says it intends to "investigate and take appropriate measures" to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property (IP) rights related to Pokémon.

"We will continue to cherish and nurture each and every Pokémon and its world, and work to bring the world together through Pokémon in the future," the company signs off.

I'm not your Pal, buddy

After what's felt like ages, in Internet time, of speculation over whether The Pokémon Company would take notice and do anything about the similarities between the Pals of Palworld and its own pocket monsters, this is at least a firm declaration that the company is paying attention.

I can't really speak to any legality for or against here, I just write the video game blogs. But I'd have to imagine that certain efforts like the Pokémon mod for Palworld didn't do much to douse the fuse on this powder keg.

We'll see now if Pocketpair makes any response, even though they weren't explicitly named. In a recent interview with Automaton, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe said: "We make our games very seriously, and we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies."

Other than that, we'll just have to wait and see whether TPC's investigation results in them taking any action. I used to think I'd always look back on the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard announcement as the most stunning start-of-year declaration, but now the War of the Monsters might give it a run for its money.

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With 6 million players and already proven popularity, Palworld players are expecting big things from Pocketpair. Our first glimpse of the Early Access roadmap for Palworld shows that the team is already working on even more content for the survival game.

Prior to the ridiculously successful launch of Palworld, Pocketpair promised a “one year roadmap” shortly after launch. Although this is more of a vague guideline of what’s to come, it gives a lot of hope for the future of Palworld.

At the top, Pocketpair confirms it's focusing on addressing "critical issues" with Palworld, prioritizing fixing those problems. This includes world date rollbacks and the loading screen persisting when trying to load into new worlds.

New Pals and areas to explore

Most importantly, at least in my opinion, the team at Pocketpair have promised the addition of new Pals to capture, though they’ve not given any hints as to how many will be added or how soon. 

They’ve also said that they’re looking to add more islands, which means that we’re not going to be short of new places to explore any time soon.

PvP and battle content

One of the most exciting updates is the chance to pit our Pals against other players. With their arsenal of weapons and special abilities, it could be entertaining to watch them duke it out.

Pocketpair have been very vocal about their desire to add PvP into the game and on Steam, they state that they’re already “testing PvP internally”, so this addition seems like may be coming sooner rather than later. 

They’re also looking to put Raid Bosses into the game, which will likely require multiple people in order to complete. There’s no word on how this will work yet.

Steam - Xbox Crossplay

Right now, players on Xbox cannot play with those who purchased the game on Steam, but that looks to be changing some time soon. That should make it easier for people across different platforms, including those on PC via Game Pass, to all party up.

In the same realm of updates, they’re also planning on implementing Server Transfers and Migration.

Pal trading

Pocketpair didn’t go into this too specifically, so we’re unsure whether you’ll need to be on the same server in order to exchange Pals to further your Pal Deck completion endeavors. But this should hopefully let you share around the captures, rather than keep them all to yourself. 

Building systems updates

Again, we weren’t given any specifics about what these updates would actually be, but here’s hoping that the roof building gets just a little bit less convoluted. On top of this, Pocketpair are also hoping to add more buildings and elements which play into the survival aspect of the game. 

Steam Workshop support

With the controversy surrounding the recently cancelled Pokémon mod, there definitely seems to be interest in adding onto the foundation of Palworld. So it’s no surprise to see that Pocketpair will be allowing Steam Workshop support for the modders within the now rather large community of players. 

Updates to Pal AI

I cannot reasonably write this part without mentioning my biggest complaint about the game - Pals have absolutely no idea how to organize anything and it drives me mad. 

Within the Roadmap, Pocketpair have said they’re going to be working on improvements to Pal AI. Whether this improvement will be to organization, preventing them from getting stuck inside of rocks (how do they always manage to do this?) or preventing the situation where my Lifmunk is trying to juggle 20 pieces of rock and failing miserably. Either way, I for one am looking forward to this particular update.

No dates were given for when these updates on the Palworld roadmap will start to arrive.

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