It’s become a hot topic on 5ch’s hardware/industry board (Geha) that Palworld’s App Store sales ranking has plunged to 149th place, after the free-to-play game “Animo” — said to be nearly identical to Palworld — earned a Metacritic score (78) almost matching Palworld’s own, sparking comments like “if the scores are the same, might as well go with the free one.” The thread also brought up reports that Palworld’s operating company posted a 42 million yen loss, along with news that resale prices for related trading cards have been falling both in Japan and overseas, with many posters contrasting this against Pokémon’s reportedly strong financial results.
If people are fine with a ripoff, they'll be fine with any other ripoff too 🥺
Even setting aside the Pokémon skin, Palworld is blatantly a ripoff of Ark.
You mean "not doing great," right? lol
The Pokémon Company's revenue has grown about 4.4x over 5 years, reaching roughly ¥531.4 billion for the fiscal year ending February 2026. Net profit is up about 13.6x over 8 years, to around ¥120 billion.
https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/news/2609072e
LOL they're absolutely thriving.
Bigger than Disney at this point.
– Full release → sales end up mediocre
– Full release means Metacritic finally scores it → lands at a crappy 70
– Trading cards launch → flop hard
– Gets eaten alive by a ripoff → completely finished
What a year of collapse this turned out to be 🥰
[September 2026 Update] Palpagos Dawn Buyback Price Rankings — How Has the Market Changed One Month After Release?
https://palcardlab.com/palpagos-dawn-buyback-price-september-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Tsuppa-nyan Soul SSS, the biggest chase card from "Palpagos Dawn":
August: ¥110,000–150,000
↓
September: ¥72,000–120,000
Of course it's not fine lol
Only one card went up in price, and even that was a measly ¥1,000 → ¥1,300 — both the base price and the increase are pathetic.
Outlook's grim.
Palworld
Loss: ¥42 million
https://gamebiz.jp/news/408257
Oh… (yeah, I get it)
Palworld spent 3 years making the 1.0 release, and it only sold a million copies.
With a dev team that size working for 3 years, there's no way you break even on just a million units…
It's obviously a tax write-off scheme~ 😊
What's more, according to overseas price indexes, 253 tracked card types fell an average of 11.8% over the 13 days from September 9–21. In just the last 7 days alone, prices dropped 7.8%, with 170 cards falling and only 35 rising.
It's over…
Sounds like the scalpers who bought in thinking "maybe this'll sell!" are starting to realize it's a lost cause.
Big streamers treated it like a cursed item guaranteed not to sell if they touched it 🤣🤣🤣🤣
No one wants to voluntarily attract crazies, whether they're fanboys or haters…
It's basically guaranteed the comment section turns gross.
Before the ripoff showed up, it was at least holding in the low double digits even at its worst.
That's a massive drop.
– Paid, Metascore 78
Palworld's ripoff
– Free, Metascore 78
Yeah, the ripoff's just the better deal.
LOL.
Same score? Obviously going with the free-to-play one.
Mokou was wild, huh — the moment he streamed Palworld, Palworld fanboys swarmed his comments and just started bashing Pokémon nonstop.
Those aren't Palworld fanboys, they're Nintendo haters.
There's no such thing as an actual Palworld fanboy.
It was huge that a big-name streamer basically demonstrated exactly what happens if you touch it.
If nobody's willing to even give it a shot for the small chance of it blowing up, that says everything.
Is Animo doing controversy-marketing on purpose?
In the West it actually blew up pretty badly with people calling it a Palworld ripoff — it got bad enough that Palworld's company had to put out an official statement.
That's hilarious lol
From that alone it just sounds like Palworld's the one making noise.
Did the Chinese side actually copy the character designs on purpose or something?
Guess the "Palworld cudgel" (slang for the stick antis used to beat Pokémon with) didn't just break — it shattered into dust.
Honestly, I'd hesitate to even go on an adventure with these things.
Bringing up the character designs just ends up proving how good Pokémon's designs actually are.
– Animo, a blatant Palworld ripoff, launches free-to-play
↓
– Animo's Metascore ends up almost tied with Palworld's, sparking a "might as well just play Animo then 😄" mood
↓
– Palworld, having lost customers to Animo, crashes to 149th on the sales chart ♥
Looking at it this way, if Palworld had actually been a masterpiece that scored high on Metacritic, none of this would've happened.
Palworld losing out is an extremely fitting outcome.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Since its release, Palworld has been described as “a mashup of Pokémon and Ark,” and after three years of development, the full release reportedly sold only around a million copies, with the operating company posting a loss of ¥42 million (gamebiz.jp). Meanwhile, Nintendo and Pokémon are thriving — The Pokémon Company’s revenue is said to have grown roughly 4.4x over 5 years to ¥531.4 billion, with net profit up about 13.6x over 8 years to around ¥120 billion (denfaminicogamer). The game at the center of this discussion, “Animo,” is free-to-play and has earned a Metascore (78) nearly identical to Palworld’s, and many posters in the thread felt that “if the scores are the same, of course you’d pick the free one.” It’s worth noting that the 149th-place sales rank and the double-digit-percentage drops in trading card resale prices (both in Japan and abroad) are all snapshot figures at the time this article was written, and don’t guarantee a continuing trend. Still, given that Palworld itself has faced longstanding accusations of copying, the “imitator gets overtaken by its own imitator” narrative drew a lot of attention.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “Palworld, Beaten by a Ripoff Game, Crashes to 149th on the Sales Chart 😭.”
