Palword gets massive win in Japan despite Nintendo & Pokemon Company lawsuit

Palworld developer Pocketpair isn’t letting an ongoing Lawsuit from Nintendo and Game Freak slow them down. The game’s PS5 launch in Japan proves it.

It has been a wild ride for survival/monster taming game and Pokemon competitor Palworld. The indie hit had an explosive launch earlier this year and briefly became the second most-played game of all time on Steam.

Of course, the game wasn’t immune to controversy and Pokemon fans came out of the woodwork to slam some questionably similar creature designs as plagiarism. It took a little longer for the famously litigious Nintendo to respond than people expected but now, Palworld developer Pocketpair and Japan’s biggest publisher are locked in a legal battle.

Despite the current lawsuit leveled at Pocketpair by Nintendo and Gamefreak, Palworld is still scoring points with gamers. The game recently topped the PS5 charts in Japan beating out homegrown favorites.

Palworld shocked the world for a second time when it was revealed that the game would finally launch on PlayStation 5 in the midst of the legal battle surrounding it. For most of the world, Palworld was shadow-dropped to the console on September 26, 2024.

Japan did have to wait a little longer but PS5 players in the region finally got their hands on the game on October 4, 2024.

Thanks to an official roundup from PlayStation, we’ve got some idea of how the game has performed on the platform. In the US and Canada, the game came in a respectable 10th place but in Japan, Palworld was the most downloaded game on PS5 for the month of October.

Claiming the top spot is respectable enough on its own, but it’s even more impressive when you consider its competitors. Palworld beat out Metaphor: ReFantazio and Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, both of which were expected to perform incredibly well in Japan.

Fortunately for Pocketpair, they can celebrate this success and rest a little easier regarding the Nintendo lawsuit.

Despite early assumptions that they would be taken to the cleaners, Nintendo and Gamefreak are only suing for 10 million yen (about $66,000 / £50,000), which thanks to Palworld’s success, should be easy enough for PocketPair to pay.