Palworld developers warn players to avoid flood of fake Apple and Google Play apps

Any amount of success in the games industry will lead to companies actively trying to ride the waves by creating cheap mobile knockoffs designed only to trick people into playing them. For mega-hits like Palworld, this can cause serious safety concerns if things go unchecked. 

Palworld launched in early access on PC and Xbox Series X/S on Jan. 19 and blew all expectations out of the water by selling eight million copies on Steam alone in under a week. The game also hit over two million peak concurrent players on Steam, marking just the second time a game has ever done that—and it has maintained an average of over 1.1 million players since its release. 

Numbers like that are bound to draw eyes to the monster-catching survival game. But things have gotten so bad that Palworld’s developers at Pocketpair had to make an official announcement asking players or anyone interested in the game to avoid knockoff games that are popping up on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. 

Since Palworld is only available on PC and Xbox right now, a few mobile apps using the game’s name or something very similar have popped up to try and trick players into downloading them. Most of these apps on the English side of things appear to be “companion” products on the Apple App Store that act as maps or collectepedia for the Pals in the game. It is likely much worse in other countries, and Pocketpair is trying to get ahead of the next wave that will probably start dropping over the next several weeks as Palworld continues to thrive. 

“There is no Palworld application for phones. Apps using names and product images such as ‘パルワールド” and “Palworld‘ are appearing on the AppStore and Google Play, but they are not affiliated with our company in any way,” Pocketpair said on Jan. 31. “We have reported this issue to Apple, which operates the App Store, and Google, which operates Google Play.”

A mobile version of Palworld might be on the cards alongside a PlayStation and Nintendo Switch release in a future roadmap update or when the game is ready to come out of early access. But Pocketpair is currently focusing on the already available.