Palworld dev was surprised by Nintendo / Pokemon lawsuit, was “a very depressing day”

During a talk at GDC 2025, Pocketpair global community manager John Buckley responded to the lawsuit Nintendo and The Pokemon Company filed against the company over Palworld.

Buckley spoke about how the move came as a shock for Pocketpair since the team “did legal checks” before the game’s release. He also mentioned that “it didn’t feel good obviously” and “it was a very depressing day” when the lawsuit came in.

Buckley’s full words:

“We did legal checks before Palworld released and they were all cleared in Japan. So obviously when the lawsuit was announced we were like, ‘What?’ And we went back to the lawyers, and the lawyers contacted the courts and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ and that’s when we realized it was patents they were going for.”

“Pretty much everyone at Pocketpair is a huge fan, so it was a very depressing day, everyone heads down and walking in the rain. It changed a lot of things for us. We were just about to release the PlayStation version, we were just about to go to Tokyo Game Show, so obviously we had to scale back a little bit and hire security guards and stuff like that.”

Nintendo and The Pokemon Company started to pursue legal action against Palworld last September. Along with an injunction, the lawsuit seeks 5 million yen for infringement on three separate patents. One reason for the dispute involves the similarity between the Pal Sphere and PokeBalls.

Pocket Pair delivered an official statement after the lawsuit was announced. The company said they’d “do our utmost for our fans, and to ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.” Read the full statement here.

Thanks to PC Gamer for the quotes above.