Palworld inks deal to bring its definitely-not-Pokémon action to your phone

Game developers are all too aware of the potential from the massive smartphone user base out there, all carrying around essentially tiny game consoles in their pockets. And as a consequence, it’s little surprise when the hot new game on consoles or PC turns its attention to a mobile port. This time’s a little different, though, with the interesting twist of a lawsuit hanging over everything, as Palworld gets ready to take the dip into mobile.

Palworld’s been in development for years, but things really kicked off in in January when early access on Steam opened. The game has drawn a lot of comparisons to Pokémon with its use of cartoonish monsters that players tame and collect. Unlike Pokémon, though, these monsters use guns — something apparently a little too extreme for Nintendo, which filed suit against developer Pocketpair last month.

Even in the shadow of that legal action, Pocketpair announces that it’s inked a deal with PUBG publisher Krafton, giving the latter a global license for Palworld mobile games (via Engadget).

Right now, it’s a little early to say exactly what form this mobile game may take, and how faithful it might be to the gameplay of Palworld as we know it, but the announcement gives us hope that we won’t be entirely reinventing the wheel here, with Krafton saying that it “plans to faithfully reinterpret and implement the original’s main fun elements to fit the mobile environment.”

And of course, this is all presuming that Krafton doesn’t find itself faced by injunctions and the full force of Nintendo’s legal department looking to prevent this game from going mobile. Actually, gearing up for a fight like that doesn’t sound like the basis for half a bad game itself.