Pocketpair had to have known this was coming.
Palworld not only empowers, but straight up encourages players to do some incomprehensibly cruel acts to the creatures of its world in the name of efficiency. Your job, chiefly, is to catch free-roaming Pals and force them to work and fight for you for free, and yet, as if the premise isn't messed up enough, one player set out to find whether Pals can be killed simply by becoming overworked. The answer, the player learned after a brutal eight hour experiment, is no, but they will become horribly sick and depressed.
The player, going by siroidangan zawa on Twitter, and whose commentary was translated by Automaton, set their pals to 'Super Hard Working' - which increases efficiency but leaves Pals open to stress and disease - assigned them the task of stone-cutting, and then stripped from of their right to a restful sleep by minimizing their in-game Day Time Speed and maximizing Night Time Speed.
働き方改革監視台という拠点で働いているパル達を鬼畜に働かせるか普通に働かせるか設定出来るものがあります。過労ﾀﾋするのか知りたいので超肉体労働の石削り拠点を超ハードワークにしてしばらく放置してみます🫠#パルワールド#Xbox https://t.co/YfYPn8Z916 pic.twitter.com/KNq3gcbuYLJanuary 25, 2024
An hour of this madness later, the player's Pals had been subject to ailments like weakness, stomach ulcers, colds, and severe stress, and yet the hopelessly loyal creatures continued working. The player tried to alleviate the conditions by feeding their subjects a bunch of eggs and giving them hot springs to warm up, but it was an uphill battle.
Eventually, around the two-hour mark, the Pals started succumbing to fractures.
"Their once-cheerful facial expressions have clearly fallen (this is well made), and they don’t seem to be enjoying their food…As soon as they sustain fractures and collapse, they get back up and return to their posts."
Five hours later, "almost everyone became depressed," wrote the player in yet another highly distressing update. And finally, an unthinkable eight hours later, we got our final update on the little Pals that could.
あれから約8時間長時間SAN数値0&鬱病から特に変化が無くこれ以上継続しても無意味と判断し中止にしました。結果「過労ﾀﾋまではしないがパフォーマンスが著しく悪くなる」そして、今回の被験者パル達全員の病気や怪我を治すのがめんどくさいので全員商人に売り飛ばしました。… https://t.co/ZU8kbekHy5 pic.twitter.com/rrjiy5gyptJanuary 27, 2024
"Sanity values remained at 0 for a long time and depression remained unchanged, so I've decided that continuing the experiment would be pointless," the player reported. "Result: Pals cannot die from being overworked but will be significantly impaired in performance."
As if they hadn't endured enough, the poor ol' Pals, broken in mind and spirit, were sold to the highest bidder for 5076 gold coins because it "would be too much of a bother" healing them.
Of course, there's no telling whether the Pals would eventually die had they continued to work after the eight-hour mark, but it seems unlikely. Either way, I don't think I could bear the watch another experiment like this one to find out.
Nintendo is taking legal action against a Pokemon clone, but it ain't Palworld.
