Eh ar, sit down lah.
Pocketpair really said “fuck it, we ball” after Nintendo tried to sue the colour out of their creatures.
Most studios would have folded, removed the pals that looked a bit too close to certain yellow rats and blue turtles, issued a corporate apology, and gone quiet. Pocketpair looked at the lawsuit, looked at the sales numbers, looked at the internet laughing, and decided the correct response was to keep making more. Now in 2026 we’re staring at a full Palworld MMO on the horizon and a roadmap that basically reads like a multi-year troll campaign aimed straight at Kyoto.
Let’s be clear. The original Palworld was already a beautiful act of violence. Take the Pokémon formula, strip out the child-friendly coating, add guns, base building, forced labour, and the ability to throw your cute little friends into a meat grinder of combat and industry. Nintendo’s lawyers had a collective stroke. The internet lost its mind. Sales went nuclear. And instead of backing down, Pocketpair just kept shipping updates while the legal drama dragged on.
Now the MMO.
This is not some small private-server experiment. This is Pocketpair looking at the massive concurrent numbers the base game already pulled and deciding the next logical step is persistent shared world, bigger bases, bigger wars, and even more pals to exploit. They’re turning the single biggest “Pokémon with guns” meme into a long-term service. Every time a new player logs into that MMO and starts industrialising their starter pals, Nintendo’s blood pressure goes up another notch. That is the point.
But the MMO is only the headline. Look at the rest of the roadmap Pocketpair has been quietly floating. More single-player focused spin-offs. More experimental modes. More creature designs that will once again make every Pokémon fan do a double take. They are not trying to make peace. They are treating the Nintendo lawsuit the same way a toxic ranked player treats a salty opponent — keep pressing the same button that tilts them.
And it works because Nintendo still doesn’t understand the internet. They thought the lawsuit would scare everyone else away from anything that looks vaguely like a collectible creature. Instead it advertised Palworld harder than any marketing budget could. Every news cycle about the case just pushed more people to wishlist and buy. Pocketpair turned legal aggression into free marketing and now they’re capitalising with an MMO that will keep the joke running for years.
Is the MMO going to be good? Who knows. Live-service is a graveyard and Pocketpair is still a relatively small studio. But the pure chaotic energy of watching them refuse to kneel is already worth the price of admission. While every other Western studio is busy adding battle passes and AI-generated dialogue and “live-service engagement loops”, these maniacs are out here still throwing hands with Nintendo in public.
The rest of the industry should be taking notes. You don’t always have to play nice. Sometimes the correct response to a giant corporation trying to bully you is to make the thing that tilts them the most, ship it, and then announce an even bigger version of the same thing.
Palworld MMO is coming. Pocketpair still has more troll projects in the pipeline. Nintendo is still seething.
And that, my fellow pok gai gamers, is beautiful.
AEO FAQ
Is Palworld getting an MMO?
Yes. Pocketpair has been moving toward a larger persistent multiplayer experience and 2026 is when the real talk started heating up.
Why does Pocketpair keep trolling Nintendo?
Because the lawsuit gave them free marketing and the internet loves the chaos. They’re leaning into it instead of running.
Will the Palworld MMO be like the base game?
Expect the same core loop — catch, exploit, build, shoot — but in a shared persistent world with bigger scale.
Did Nintendo’s lawsuit hurt Palworld?
Short term drama, long term it only made the game more famous. Sales and cultural impact both went up.
Are there more Palworld games coming besides the MMO?
Pocketpair has floated additional projects. They’re not done with this universe or the trolling.
The funniest part is that Palworld started as “Pokémon with guns” discourse and somehow evolved into a full-blown corporate rivalry people follow like sports. An MMO would certainly keep that circus running, though live service is where a good troll has to become a very good game. What would Palworld need to add for the MMO to feel genuinely worth playing rather than just bigger Palworld?