Screenshot Saturday Mondays: Cutting through the crypto spam

Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye was caught by dozens upon dozens of spam accounts hijacking the tag to promote cryptocurrency garbage. Twitter’s journey to uselessness continues. But after reporting dozens of accounts in the vain hope that Twitter might at least knock these particular bots offline (knowing it’ll never actually address the wider problem), I was delighted to admire a great many attractive and interesting indie games. Check out this week’s pick!

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Palworld Devs Says They Have Received Death Threats Amid Pokémon ‘Rip-Off’ Claims

Amid the explosive launch of Palworld, its developers have taken to social media to say they have received death threats.

Last week, IGN reported on how Palworld, aka ‘Pokémon with guns’, had sparked a vociferous debate online about whether it had “ripped-off” Nintendo’s famous franchise.

Some Pokémon fans say Palworld’s Pals are too similar to Pokémon, with a number of social media posts that place Pals next to Pokémon going viral.

Palworld developer Pocketpair has insisted Palworld is more akin to survival crafting games such as Ark Survival Evolved and Valheim than Pokemon, but that hasn’t stopped people from continuing to hit out at the game.

Pocketpair community manager Bucky, who has been active on Twitter / X and Palworld’s Discord, posted to say they had received death threats since the game went live in early access form on January 19.

“Frantically working through all my DMs and emails! I promise!” Bucky said. “However, you’ll excuse me if I skip over the death threats, threats to the company and massively outlandish claims.

“If you’re capable of writing like an actual human being though, I’ll reply asap!”

Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe also tweeted to say they had received death threats, and hit out at “slanderous comments”.

“Currently, we are receiving slanderous comments against our artists, and we are seeing tweets that appear to be death threats,” Mizobe said.

“I have received a variety of opinions regarding Palworld, but all productions related to Palworld are supervised by multiple people, including myself, and I am responsible for the production.

“I would appreciate it if you would refrain from slandering the artists involved in Palworld.”

In a new interview published by Automaton, Mizobe addressed the question of potential legal issues surrounding Palworld’s release and its likeness to Pokémon. According to the site, Mizobe said Palworld cleared legal reviews, and insisted there has been no action taken against it by other companies.

Mizobe said: “We make our games very seriously, and we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies.”

Last year, a new survey from the Game Developers Conference revealed a majority of game developers see harassment from players as a major problem for the industry. Of the 2,300 developers surveyed, 91% said player harassment and toxicity towards developers was an issue. 42% said it’s a “very serious” issue.

While Palworld is a clear smash hit, it is not without controversy. The Xbox version continues to lag behind the Steam version in terms of key features and updates, and Palworld’s enormous launch has seen its servers struggle, too.

Check out IGN’s Palworld Early Access Review in Progress to find out what we thought.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Piracy, preservation, and the devs who don’t mind if you have to pirate their game

“Most of videogame history is alive and well due to the ability to pirate old video games,” Frank Cifaldi, founder of the Video Game History Foundation, tells me over a call. Last year, the preservation and archival non-profit put out a study revealing that 87% of games made before 2010 are out of print. “There’s no way to access them without either pirating them or buying antiques from vendors. That’s a scary place to be.”

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Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown Dev Would “Love” To Make A Zelda Game

A Zelda II spin-off, perhaps?

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is finally here and has quickly been racking up praise from seemingly everyone who plays it. With such acclaim, it was only going to be a matter of time before speculation began about what the Ubisoft Montpellier team would turn their talents to next and it seems like the devs themselves have some pretty big dreams.

Last week, two of the game’s developers, Christophe Pic (world director) and Rémi Boutin (senior game designer), hosted an ‘Ask Us Anything‘ chat on the r/metroidvania Reddit forum during which they were asked a series of questions about the game, its inspirations and what it means to the Prince of Persia series as a whole.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Palworld updates coming for broken multiplayer, inaccessible servers and save data bugs

When I innocently went on holiday on Thursday evening, Palworld was that flagrant cash-in survival game where you can make Pokemon – sorry, Pals – shoot guns and work on an assembly line. As of this morning, it’s among the most-played games in the world, one of just six to exceed one million concurrent players on Steam. Right now, it’s doing almost twice the numbers of Steam’s usual chart-topper Counter-Strike 2. We have entered the Pal Age, it seems – but how long will the feeding frenzy last? How much is owing to it releasing during the quiet time of year with a meme-ish premise, while capitalising on pent-up demand for a proper PC version of Nintendo’s monster-catching series? Much will depend, I think, on how quickly developers Pocketpair can update it and stay ahead of the usual early access game avalanche of community requests and complaints.

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Palworld Dev Working to Fix Serious Bugs, Including Lost Save Data

While Palworld has enjoyed an enormous launch, there are a number of serious bugs affecting players. Developer Pocketpair said it’s working on issuing fixes, including for players who are unable to enter servers, unable to play multiplayer, and a dreaded lost saved data bug.

In a post on the Palworld Discord, community manager ‘Bucky’ said the developer had received over 50,000 inquiries since the game went on sale on January 19. “We sincerely apologize for the delay in response from our support team,” Bucky said.

Bucky said save data from single-player and co-op “may be able to be restored”, and pointed to a Google Doc with instructions to help. “We apologize for any inconvenience caused,” Bucky continued. “Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.”

Palworld has a particularly nasty bug that may cause the ‘Memory Reset Drug’, which is used to reset character stats, to permanently reduce the player’s capture power. Community manager Kei said Pocketpair is investigating this issue, and warned players not to use the item until a fix was issued.

Palworld has also suffered issues as players flood the servers. Pocketpair said that after concurrents across all platforms exceeded a whopping 1.3 million, the Epic Online Service experienced outages, causing connectivity issues with co-op and servers.

While Palworld is a clear smash hit, it is not without controversy. Last week IGN reported on how some Pokémon fans were taking to social media to point out striking similarities between Palworld’s Pals and the Pokémon themselves. Elsewhere, the Xbox version continues to lag behind the Steam version in terms of key features and updates. Palworld’s enormous launch has seen its servers struggle, too.

Check out IGN’s Palworld Early Access Review in Progress to find out what we thought.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Steam Deck beta client update explains what its performance settings actually do

The latest Steam Deck beta client update is out, and it’s made a pretty neat addition to the quick-access performance menu. A tap of the Y button now brings up a brief explainer for whichever individual setting is currently highlighted, a handy lil’ reference for anyone who wants to customise how their Deck (or Steam Deck OLED) runs without knowing exactly how things like TDP limits and half-rate shading affect performance. Clearly it’s also a brutal attack on the livelihoods of honest hardware editors who write guides to this sort of thing, but whatever, Valve.

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Palworld Has Huge Weekend, Sells 5 Million and Overtakes Cyberpunk 2077 in Steam’s Most-Played Games List

Palworld’s astonishing success swelled over the weekend, with the ‘Pokémon with guns’ survival and crafting game shooting up Steam’s most-played games list and selling millions more copies.

Palworld launched on January 19 in early access form on Steam as well as on Xbox and Windows PC, day-and-date with Game Pass. Palworld overtook CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 to set Steam’s fifth highest peak concurrent player count with 1,291,967 online at the same time on Valve’s platform. Palworld is currently the most-played game on Steam, ahead of behemoths Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG. It is just the sixth game ever to hit one million concurrents on Steam.

There are a number of Steam records that go along with this success on Steam. Palworld is now the most-played Japanese-developed game ever on Steam (its developer, PocketPair, is based in Tokyo), ahead of previous record holder, Elden Ring. And Palworld is the second most-played paid game ever on Steam, behind PUBG’s perhaps insurmountable peak concurrent figure of 3,257,248, which was set before the battle royale went free-to-play.

Meanwhile, Pocketpair said Palworld had sold over five million in about three days, with 86,000 copies selling per hour. For context, Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man sold 3.3 million copies in its first three days on sale, Sony Santa Monica Studio’s God of War sold 3.1 million in three days, and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us 2 sold 4 million in the same time period. Palworld, then, has sold faster than the fastest-selling first-party PS4 exclusive ever in a three-day sales window.

While Palworld is a clear smash hit, it is not without controversy. Last week IGN reported on how some Pokémon fans were taking to social media to point out striking similarities between Palworld’s Pals and the Pokémon themselves. Elsewhere, the Xbox version continues to lag behind the Steam version in terms of key features and updates. Palworld’s enormous launch has seen its servers struggle, too.

Check out IGN’s Palworld Early Access Review in Progress to find out what we thought.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Palworld Has Huge Weekend, Sells 4 Million and Overtakes Cyberpunk 2077 in Steam’s Most-Played Games List

Palworld’s astonishing success swelled over the weekend, with the ‘Pokémon with guns’ survival and crafting game shooting up Steam’s most-played games list and selling millions more copies.

Palworld launched on January 19 in early access form on Steam as well as on Xbox and Windows PC, day-and-date with Game Pass. Palworld overtook CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 to set Steam’s fifth highest peak concurrent player count with 1,291,967 online at the same time on Valve’s platform. Palworld is currently the most-played game on Steam, ahead of behemoths Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG. It is just the sixth game ever to hit one million concurrents on Steam.

There are a number of Steam records that go along with this success on Steam. Palworld is now the most-played Japanese-developed game ever on Steam (its developer, PocketPair, is based in Tokyo), ahead of previous record holder, Elden Ring. And Palworld is the second most-played paid game ever on Steam, behind PUBG’s perhaps insurmountable peak concurrent figure of 3,257,248, which was set before the battle royale went free-to-play.

Meanwhile, Pocketpair said Palworld had sold over four million in about three days, with 86,000 copies selling per hour. For context, Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man sold 3.3 million copies in its first three days on sale, Sony Santa Monica Studio’s God of War sold 3.1 million in three days, and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us 2 sold 4 million in the same time period. Palworld, then, has matched the sales of the fastest-selling first-party PS4 exclusive ever in a three-day sales window.

While Palworld is a clear smash hit, it is not without controversy. Last week IGN reported on how some Pokémon fans were taking to social media to point out striking similarities between Palworld’s Pals and the Pokémon themselves. Elsewhere, the Xbox version continues to lag behind the Steam version in terms of key features and updates. Palworld’s enormous launch has seen its servers struggle, too.

Check out IGN’s Palworld Early Access Review in Progress to find out what we thought.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The Maw 22nd-27th January 2024

As W.H. Auden once wrote: “our apparatniks will continue making / the usual squalid mess called History: / all we can pray for is that Videogame News Writers may still appear to blithe it.” Welcome one and all to another week of addled product journalism care of your ever-salivating host, the Maw, ravenous hype god and certainly not a silly metaphor I’ve come up with to make my job sound grander than it should be.

This week’s menu of new videogame releases: world-jumping squad tactics adaptation Stargate: Timekeepers (23rd Jan); wild-eyed Soviet job sim Trans-Siberian Railway Simulator: Prologue (23rd Jan); Valheim-ish fantasy survival game Enshrouded (24th Jan, early access); fugitive Asgardian town-builder Roots Of Yggdrasil (24th Jan, early access); moody anime fighter Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes (24th Jan); rolly-polly shooter Go Mecha Ball (25th Jan); asymmetrical multiplayer dungeon romp Phantom Abyss (25th Jan); finger-jabbing courtroom drama Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy (25th Jan); jaunty yakuza RPG Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth (25th Jan); infant witch adventure The Cauldron Kids: The Summoning of Mr. Vermicelli (25th Jan); hand-drawn horror MMORPG Mad World – Age of Darkness (25th Jan); high-kicking octa-quel (is it a word?) Tekken 8 (26th Jan).

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