Pocketpair publishing boss John Buckley said the Japanese studio simply doesn’t “believe in” the tech.
While artificial intelligence is ubiquitous these days, Palworld developer Pocketpair isn’t too interested in the technology, with the Japanese studio’s publishing boss saying that the team doesn’t believe in generative AI and won’t work with game makers who use it.
In an October 21 interview with Game Developer at Gamescom Asia, Pocketpair’s communications director and publishing manager John Buckley explained that, while the studio’s newly established publishing division is happy to work with game makers of all backgrounds and skillsets, the use of generative AI is a deal-breaker.
“People are going to say I’m lying, but these are just the hard facts. We don’t believe in it,” he said. “We’re very upfront about it. If you’re big on AI stuff or your game is Web3 or uses NFTs, there are lots of publishers out there [who’ll talk to you], but we’re not the right partner for that.”
It’s a bold position, to be sure, especially since other big-name publishers like EA are pushing AI on their workers hard. Still, Buckley is aware that the AI floodgates have opened and believes it’ll worsen in time.
“I think over the next two or three years we’re going to get into this weird era–and you can see it slowly happening now on Steam–of really low-quality, AI-made games,” he said. “It’s something that has plagued other stores but Steam had been good at keeping them out. But it’s happening. This wave is coming, and I think we’re going to enter this kind of authenticity market where people are going to slowly say, ‘No, these guys are really trying to make something special’ to fight back.”
Pocketpair has been accused of using AI since bursting on the scene in January 2024 with its Pokemon-but-guns game Palworld. Buckley and the rest of the Japanese studio are intimately familiar with AI scrutiny, explaining that instead of fighting the allegations, he hopes Pocketpair’s position and overall work ethic prove that the developers aren’t down with AI in the slightest.
“You know, I can’t just come out and start fighting with these people [who make the AI accusations] because that just fuels what’s going on,” he said. “That’s when I feel there’s nothing more we can do here. I can say ‘it’s not, we made it’ and they can say ‘it is, you didn’t make it’ and what are we going to do? Just go back and forth forever.”
Pocketpair is currently in the middle of a tense lawsuit with Nintendo over Palworld, with the latest in the litigation being that the Pokemon maker believes mods don’t constitute “prior art.” This motion essentially invalidates Palworld as a mere copycat of Pokemon, not something wholly original like Pocketpair argues.
