Palworld might come to Android and iOS if Nintendo doesn’t sue it out of existence first

Ben Schoon | Oct 2 2024 - 8:15 am PT

The hit game Palworld may be making its way, in some form, to Android and iOS in the future, assuming a certain lawsuit doesn’t end the game first.

Palworld was released earlier this year and made a massive splash, setting records on Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass and becoming just an absolutely gigantic hit. The “Pokemon with guns” title has since lost a lot of its players, but is still widely played and has been getting content updates too.

Now, the game may also be expanding to mobile devices.

In a press release out of Korea (translated, via Engadget), Krafton has announced its intentions to “faithfully reinterpret and implement” Palworld’s “main fun elements to fit the mobile environment.” In other words, a mobile version of the game that’s not quite the same, but true to the main elements of the full game.

There’s no word on when this might happen, but the port would be in good hands. Krafton is the same company that brought PUBG to mobile devices. The same studio that handles PUBG on mobile would be in charge of Palworld’s mobile version. This would also be far from the first hit game to be expanded to mobile, with other examples including Ark: Survival, Rocket League (through Sideswipe), Fortnite, Fall Guys, and many more.

However, the massive asterisk hanging over this is the ongoing Nintendo lawsuit that was opened against Pocketpair, Palworld’s developer, last month. Nintendo and The Pokemon Company sued Pocketpair for patent violation, apparently over similarities to how you capture “pals” in Palworld to how you capture Pokemon in Nintendo’s games. The outcome of that case is still unknown and likely to go on for a while, but it certainly puts a huge question mark on whether or not we’ll actually see Palworld make its way to Android and iOS.