Image: Palworld/ToastedShoes
We almost got Pokemon in Palworld.
Palworld, the multiplayer survival crafting game affectionately nicknamed ‘Pokemon with Guns’, almost actually had Pokemon with guns until Nintendo took action this week. The game revolves around using adorable creatures as slaves and weapons to craft structures and mine for resources, but one modder called ToastedShoes recently revealed a mod that would swap out in-game Pal models with actual Pokemon.
Within hours of posting a trailer for the mod, however, ToastedShoes posted on Twitter/X to confirm that he had taken the video down due to a copyright claim from Nintendo. He tweeted, “Nintendo has come for me, please leave me in your thoughts and prayers.”
Palworld’s Pokemon mod is dead (for now)
Developer Pocketpair released Palworld last week, and the game has since proven to be an unmitigated hit with more than 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam and millions of copies sold worldwide to date. Most of its success can be attributed to the fact that its titular Pals are basically Pokemon, adorable little creatures that the player uses to fight other Pals, collect resources, build structures and shoot from big guns. There’s clearly a satirical tone here aimed at Pokemon and Pokemon-like games, but that hasn’t stopped fans of the franchise from embracing the game in multitudes.
So of course, it was only a matter of time before someone modded Pokemon into Palworld. The game technically doesn’t have modding support just yet, but that hasn’t stopped ToastedShoes - a content creator who mods popular characters into games they don’t necessarily belong in, like Disney characters in Mortal Kombat 1. He posted a video of his Palworld Pokemon mod on Twitter/X:
However, the video has since been taken down by Nintendo, including the announcement tweet:
Nintendo was never going to take a mod like this lying down, especially since Palworld is already drawing plenty of comparisons to Pokemon on its own. Some have noted similarities between existing Pals and Pokemon designs like Meowth’s:
Modding websites such as Nexus Mods have already begun to remove Pokemon mods for Palworld left and right, potentially in fear of similar divine retribution from Nintendo. Nintendo itself is ramping up for the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, which could feature a new Pokemon game from The Pokemon Company as well, if the franchise’s recent trend of annual releases holds.
