PALWORLD Developer Faces Overwhelming Staff Shortage

Palworld, a game that has drawn comparisons to Pokémon due to its creature-collecting mechanics, is facing a significant staffing shortage, according to developer Pocketpair. Despite the game's commercial success, with 12 million sales on Steam and 7 million players on Xbox consoles including Game Pass subscribers, the team is urgently looking to fill numerous roles, emphasizing planners and engineers. Controversially, Palworld has received criticism over its creature designs, prompting The Pokémon Company to investigate the similarities.

Palworld is a game where players collect and utilize creatures known as pals, which assist in tasks such as farming and dungeon exploration. The pals can be battled and used to gather resources, drawing gameplay inspiration from the Pokémon series.

Palworld offers a unique blend of farming, creature collection, and survival genres, with the twist of pals also being able to fight and be utilized as resources themselves. This Early Access title's rapid growth and mixed reception due to its creature design have put it in the spotlight of both massive player interest and industry scrutiny from entities like The Pokémon Company.