Palworld Already Has Pokemon Mods, But Nexus Mods Won't Be Hosting Them

Palworld has quickly become the breakout hit of 2024. The monster-catching survival game has drawn all kinds of parallels to Pokemon because of its look, but Palworld's gameplay is much more focused on surviving its harsh landscape. However, that hasn't stopped some from floating the idea that Palworld could have copied designs from Pokemon, though the developers at Pocketpair say that they aren't concerned about those plagiarism claims at this point. With so many people comparing the two, it was only a matter of time before Palworld received a Pokemon mod. There have already been several, but the popular mod hosting site Nexus Mods has made it clear that it is "not comfortable" hosting any of them.

Why Nexus Mods Won't Host Pokemon Mods for Palworld

This news comes from an interview Nexus Mods did with PCGamesN. There, the site's community lead Mathew Elliott said, "We do think that adding Pokemon content to Palworld is a very cool idea and we understand why people would want such a thing. However, we're not comfortable hosting this content."

The reason for this stance is that Pokemon publisher Nintendo has a long and consistent history of submitting legal challenges against fan-created content. With how similar the two games look, having fan-made Pokemon mods on Nexus Mods could open the site to legal action from Nintendo. Knowing how forcibly Nintendo protects its IP, there's no reason for Nexus Mods to risk it at this stage, even if the traffic generated would likely be massive given the popularity of Palworld.

To be clear, this is probably a smart move for Nexus Mods. One of the more popular Palworld Pokemon mods was made by YouTuber ToastedShoes and his team. Toasted posted a short clip of the mod on his Twitter, saying that a full video was coming to YouTube later. That video has never appeared because Nintendo copyright struck the Twitter video and would seemingly do the same if the YouTube video was ever published. With how many eyes are on Palworld right now, Nexus Mods made the wise decision to simply step aside and keep the site out of harm's way.

What's Next For Palworld?

Despite the ongoing questions about whether or not the game skirts too close to copying Pokemon, Palworld's development team continues to work on improving the game. Earlier today, the team shared its first roadmap following release, which outlined several of the changes it's looking to make in the immediate future, while also addressing some far-future plans.

In the short term, fans can expect several bugs to be fixed that have been plaguing the game since launch. The team also has a few AI issues it wants to fix up relatively soon. Past that, Pocketpair is working on PvP, end-game raid bosses, crossplay between Steam and Xbox, and much more.

Palworld is available now on Xbox and PC platforms.