After 3 years, Pokémon’s biggest competition is officially out with a new release

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July 10, 2026

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Published Jul 10, 2026, 3:39 PM EDT

Move over, Pikachu

In early 2024, Pocketpair CEO and co-founder Taukuro Mizobe called the creation and release of his studio’s biggest game a “miracle.” Despite climbing production costs, time-consuming pivots, and no concept of a budget, Pocketpair managed to turn “Pokémon with guns” into one of the biggest indie hits of recent memory.

Now, after over two and a half years in early access, and despite the best efforts of Nintendo’s lawyers, Palworld is finally here to stay. Palworld leaves early access today with a hefty 1.0 update.

Palworld is gunning for Pokémon’s throne

If you don’t already know, Palworld is an open-world monster-taming game with survival elements and, as mentioned, guns. Like Pokémon, you can catch and train cute monsters (“Pals"). Unlike Pokémon, you can force your pals into completing manual labor tasks, equip them with rocket launchers, or even eat them. Early access launched in January 2024, and the game quickly went viral, reaching an all-time peak of 2.1 million concurrent Steam players by the end of the month.

So it’s not surprising that Palworld 1.0 is a major event. It brings with it 47 new Pals, 13 new weapons, and two new regions. That’s not to mention new skills, mechanics, and story quests. If you’re wondering exactly how big the update is, Pocketpair’s head of publishing and communications revealed it took up 40 pages and 65,000 characters — twice Steam’s maximum character limit.

That launch has been incredibly successful, hitting almost 500,000 concurrent players in its first 48 hours on Steam alone. A few days before the 1.0 release, Pocketpair announced the game had reached 40 million players. As a “small way of saying thank you” for the game’s wild success, Pocketpair announced the game would be staying at its $29.99 price point upon its official launch.

Palworld’s full launch comes after a protracted legal battle with Nintendo and the Pokémon Company, who sought an injunction (and small payout) against the game’s release for “infringing multiple patent rights.” Pocketpair ended up conceding a few gameplay changes to get around Nintendo’s claims, limiting Nintendo’s lawsuit exclusively to older versions of the game. If all that wasn’t enough, Pocketpair plans on launching a Palworld trading card game at the end of the month.

Of course, neither a messy development nor Nintendo’s lawyers were able to stop Pocketpair from releasing Palworld’s full version, which you can play on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.