Tencent Reportedly Developing Two Palworld Clones For Mobile

thegamer.com:

Palworld was a runaway success for developer Pocketpair, quickly becoming one of Steam's most-played games of all time, hitting a peak of over two million players. While its virality has died down, currently at a much lower 24-hour peak of 85,000, it's still going strong, and other developers are taking note. Cue Tencent.

As reported by Bloomberg, two Tencent studios - TiMi and Lightspeed - are reportedly developing Palworld-like mobile games. As with the Pokemon-inspired survival game, they will feature an open world with crafting elements, virtual pets, and stylised violence.

Call of Duty Mobile developer TiMi has already begun hiring for its new game, calling for Unreal Engine programmers, 3D artists, and combat designers, all for what it calls a "fantasy adventure world with cute pets". Lightspeed on the other hand is moving developers from its other projects to work on its new Palworld-like game.

According to Bloomberg, Tencent is chasing the success of Palworld to find another Honor of Kings hit that can boost its growth. It's allegedly betting on Nexon Co.'s Dungeon & Fighter Mobile in the meantime, but Nexon is a third-party developer. Tencent wants an in-house hit to generate more profit and Palworld clones could be just that.

Palworld is currently in early access, but it has already sold three million copies .

As for why Tencent has two studios developing Palworld-like games, it reportedly believes this approach will improve the quality of each due to internal competition. Honor of Kings and Peacekeeper were touted as an example of this strategy.

There's no word on when Tencent plans to launch its Palworld-like games or even announce them, but it looks like the era of Pokemon with guns is only just beginning.

Palworld has been described as Pokemon with guns and well, it's hard to argue with that. The game is very similar in nature to the Pokemon formula, tasking you with catching and working with monsters called Pals. There are key differences, though.