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Two Tencent-owned studios are reportedly creating games to rival smash-hit survival game Palworld.
As Bloomberg reports, citing several sources familiar with Tencent's plans, the publisher is apparently attempting to chase Palworld's success as its own ongoing games have reportedly faltered. To do this, Tencent has turned to Timi and Lightspeed studios, both of which are creating games designed to rival Palworld, which will specifically blend pets with stylized violence.
Tencent is reportedly incubating multiple projects by developers in the same genre, in the hope that the competition can breed better games as a result. Honor of Kings, the smash-hit Tencent-published mobile game in China, was a product of one of these incubation 'competitions.'
Palworld was made by Pocketpair, a developer whose headcount pales in comparison to the backing of Tencent's two huge studios (not to mention Tencent itself). Given that Palworld, which launched in January, is averaging over 100,000 players a day as of just a few days ago, you can see why a mega-publisher like Tencent would be eager to replicate its success.
Pocketpair's game might still be set to get even bigger in the near future. Palworld's developer is having conversations about bringing the game to new platforms, outside of PC and Xbox Series X/S, and it's not hard to imagine the survival game going on to even greater success if it's able to leverage the PS5's install base.
Somewhat amusingly, Tencent is doing exactly what Pocketpair wants to avoid. The Palworld developer said it wants to avoid "big-budget AAA games" in the future, as the game's profits were simply too big for the studio itself to handle. Where Pocketpair is trying to keep things manageable, Tencent is after a big hit.
