The gaming community is buzzing this week about the rising popularity of "Pal World." The controversial game, dubbed "Pokémon with Guns," has already surpassed 8 million sales since its early access launch last week (Friday, January 19).

Palworld has become the video game everyone is talking about, but now it is coming under fire from the brand that inspired it. The Pokémon Company has issued an official statement regarding the game, but Japanese developer Pocket Pair seems a bit worried.

The statement, released today, January 25, does not directly name Pal World, but its reasoning is still clear. The company states that it does not permit any use of the Pokémon IP and that it "intends to investigate" any infringement of its rights regarding Pokémon.

Here is the full statement (via NintendoLife):

"We have received numerous inquiries regarding another company's game released in January 2024. We have not authorized any use of Pokémon's intellectual property or assets in that game.

"We intend to investigate and take appropriate action against any infringement of intellectual property rights related to Pokémon. We will continue to carefully nurture each Pokémon and its world and work to bring the world together through Pokémon."

Like Fortnite and PUBG before it, Pal World is a third-person open world survival game. Players can explore a vast world and interact with numerous animal-like inhabitants known as Pals.

There are over 130 pals in total, each of which can be fought in battle, weakened, and then captured using the "Pal Sphere". Sound familiar?

Once captured, Pals can be summoned to assist you in battle, or stationed at your home base to help you with crafting, to name a few things. Since this is a multiplayer game, up to four players can team up to explore the world together.

It is safe to say that the game has exploded in popularity since its release last week. Sales have already surpassed 8 million copies, and it is only the sixth game in history to have over 1 million concurrent users on Steam.

It is available on Xbox Game Pass as well as Steam. However, the Xbox and Windows PC versions lack some features that the Steam version has and are currently bottlenecked from being fixed by Microsoft's certification process.

It remains to be seen whether threats or legal action from Pokémon Inc. or Nintendo could derail Pal World's success. However, given the obvious similarities between the two franchises, it would not be surprising if the battle spills over from cyberspace into the courts in the near future.