Palworld isn’t a crypto game—it’s a vampire attack on Pokemon.

Palworld launched on January 19 and has since sold more than six million copies, according to developer Pocketpair. More than that has been recorded A million players at the same time Over 300,000 viewers watch Palworld streams on Twitch on Steam alone.

In other words, this PC and Xbox indie game is a huge ripoff. Never has a game captured so much attention. This quickly Ever since the battle royale shooter craze of 2017, PUBG and Fortnite have collectively captured the world's attention.

And that's because it's basically Pokemon – but with guns.

Palworld is an open-world survival game where players roam around, collect colorful “pals”, materials, and build bases for their friends to work on. It immediately caught the attention of Pokemon fans because it's basically Pokemon – but with guns, cannibals, and slavery.

The game has sparked a lot of controversy, with some players insisting that a Nintendo lawsuit is almost certainly inevitable. And Nintendo certainly pays attention. While the gaming giant has not filed any charges against the game's creators, it has launched a takedown strike against the popular streamer that created Palworld. A mod that allows people to use the correct pokemon in the game.

In crypto, this is called a Vampire attack. “Vampire Attack” on Nintendo's player base, scratching an itch that Palword Pokemon itself couldn't scratch for its fans.

Obviously, you're itching to equip an RPG to your water-type Pokemon.

Since its launch, Uniswap has been the main on-chain destination for exchanging your tokens, and decentralized exchanges (DEX) have dominated the market. Their community wanted a token, but Uniswap was reluctant to give it to them.

Enter SushiSwap. Decentralized exchange saw a need for tokens and filled it. The group copied and pasted Uniswap's code base, launched a token, and delivered that to Uniswap users – a vampire attack. For a while, it worked. SushiSwap has seen a huge increase in users who are more interested in using DEX and paying them to use it.

Palword basically did the same thing. Many people, myself included, grew up on the Pokemon franchise – I've played every Pokemon game ever made. As we grow, we hope the Pokémon brand grows with us. And they tried, but Nintendo is really bad at listening to the fans' needs. It's still mostly a winning formula for Nintendo, but I want more.

Palword took a question that Pokemon players didn't realize they had—a desire for a more adult, immersive version of a monster-friendly experience—and filled it. When I watch Twitch streams, half the time they play Palworld they even call the creatures they catch Pokemon instead of Pals.

While some players may be hesitant to play Palword, in loyalty to Nintendo, Palword's move to deploy a hard fork of Pokemon reminds me why I love the crypto industry so much.

In an unlicensed industry, people value product quality more than brand equity. It's great to see game developers taking the same approach to winning over players as token-powered protocols do with speculation.

Edited by Andrew Hayward.