Palworld developer Pocketpair may be in the midst of a legal battle with Nintendo and The Pokemon Company, but that has not stopped PUBG publisher Krafton from signing a licensing agreement to bring the IP to mobile.
As revealed in a press release (translated via Google and DeepL), Krafton says it will "expand the Palworld IP to mobile platforms" with a project developed by PUBG Studios. What that project is isn't entirely clear at this point, however, as the press release doesn't confirm if the company is planning to port the existing survival game over from PC and consoles or produce something entirely new that uses the Palworld name. Regardless, Krafton says it will "faithfully" implement the "main fun elements" of the original game for mobile.
No indication has been given of when the project is expected to be released, either, so we'll just have to watch this space for now. In the meantime, there's the ongoing patent infringement lawsuit against Pocketpair to keep an eye on, which Nintendo and The Pokemon Company filed less than two weeks ago.
- Palworld devs tried, but the "certain franchise plus guns" brand in the West "has stuck with us to this very day despite our best efforts to shake that off"
- The Palworld lawsuit gets more complicated as Nintendo bags a US patent that sounds a lot like one of the reasons it's suing Pocketpair in Japan
At the time of writing, none of the companies have publicly revealed which patents Pocketpair allegedly infringed upon – in fact, the Palworld developer stated shortly after the lawsuit was announced that even it wasn't aware of the details, although perhaps that's changed in the meantime. Clearly, though, Pocketpair isn't letting the lawsuit get in the way of its plans right now, as Palworld also got a PS5 release just last week.
