"I guess it's just easy to be anti-Palworld": Pocketpair developer responds to latest round of controversy as the survival hit squeezes past 20 other games at the TGAs

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A Players' Choice award is courting heated reactions

Palworld
(Image credit: Pocketpair)

A Palworld developer has again responded to supposed controversy around the gun-wielding monster-tamer as Pocketpair's hit rockets past 20 other games in The Game Awards voting.

Palworld has been a bit divisive ever since its blockbuster debut all the way up until the most recent Nintendo lawsuit against the game, and it seems like the heated discussions aren't slowing down. "Palworld's latest crime against gaming is that our community outvoted 20 other games for the TGA voting," Pocketpair's global community manager Bucky tweeted today.

Last week, The Game Awards announced that 30 games were eligible for the 'Players' Voice' award, which is entirely decided by public votes only. Those 30 games have since been whittled down to just 10 with Palworld comfortably sitting alongside Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Helldivers 2, Metaphor ReFantazio, Gensin Impact, and more, which probably caused a storm in other fandoms.

"A week ago Twitter was up in arms about the TGA jury, but now the 100% player-voted category is also flawed because, *checks note*, Palworld got through," Bucky continues. "It's 100% true that some fantastic games got knocked out in round 1, [Sonic x Shadow Generations, for example, but I dunno why we are to blame...? I guess it's just easy to be anti-Palworld compared to being against the other games. Not that you should ever be against any game really..." Bucky then shouts out the "two best games of the year" that weren't even nominated for the award: Satisfactory and Factorio: Space Age. A man of taste indeed.

Palworld’s next big patch is coming this month, and it’ll be six times bigger than the survival game’s last major update. 

Kaan Serin
Freelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.