Pocketpair CEO Has Accused Tencent of Making a Palworld Clone

Palworld was successful for many reasons when it entered early access in January 2024. It boasted a large, open-world environment, intricate base-building mechanics, a high level of freedom, and a sizeable roster of monsters – known as ‘Pals’ – to capture, train, kill, and enslave. It also smacked of Pokémon, and at one point, Nintendo pledged to investigate Pocketpair, Palworld’s developer, as allegations of ‘asset flipping’ and copied content started circulating.

Now, in a sweet twist of fate, the CEO of Pocketpair, Takuro Mizobe, has taken to social media to accuse Tencent, the biggest gaming company on Earth, of making a ‘Palworld clone’.

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It’s ironic, making a clone of a clone, but here we are. On Twitter, Mizobe commented on the audacious circumstances surrounding Tencent’s development of a Palworld clone:

Tencent is already making a Palworld clone game! In China, various companies are simultaneously developing mobile clones of Palworld, and the budget scale is about 10 billion yen, 10 times that of Palworld… It looks like there will be a ton of Genshin-quality monster (or girl) breeding games released next year…

Mizobe didn’t provide a link or title to the Tencent game he referenced, but he offered a screenshot of the game, which is fairly reminiscent of Pocketpair’s sensational indie hit. It’s not easy to gauge his sentiment – at first blush, he seems angry or disappointed that Palworld clones are surfacing, but then he wraps up the message by stressing it’s ‘amazing times’.

Here’s the title he was referring to, in case you want to check it out: Auroria.

Understandably, other developers will try to capitalise on the success of Palworld, but what we’ll likely end up getting is a stack of rehashed mobile games bursting with microtransactions.

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