'Pokémon With Guns' Palworld Announces When It's Leaving Early Access

Palworld developer Pocketpair has finally announced when it plans to launch the game out of Early Access.

The open-world survival RPG launched itself into early access as well as a spot of controversy last year after it was accused of plagiarism due to its “Pokémon With Guns” designs.

Despite the controversy, Pocketpair has steadily been working on Palworld ever since its early access launch, and now we have a rough idea of when the game will be hitting its 1.0 version.

Pocketpair has announced that it plans to launch Palworld version 1.0 in 2026, marking the game’s exit from Early Access.

The developer has also stated that it is planning a “massive amount of content for this milestone, and also planning some surprises for the rest of 2025.”

In the accompanying video, Palworld communications director and publishing manager John 'Bucky' Buckley speaks more about the studio’s plans for the game in the build up to version 1.0.

“Beyond just adding new content, there’s a lot of cleanup that needs to be done before Palworld can exit Early Access,” Buckley says in the video.

“It’s no secret that Palworld has a lot of quirks and jank, and we want to take the time to properly address those before releasing the game. With that in mind, we want to start this cleanup this year.”

Palworld originally launched into Early Access on 19th January, 2024 for PC via Steam, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. It later came to PlayStation 5 in September that year, and Buckley has also not ruled out a Nintendo Switch 2 version in the past.

However, a Nintendo port of the game might be tricky, considering Pocketpair landed itself in a spot of controversy last year after it was sued by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for patent infringement.

In September 2024, Nintendo sought “an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights.”

“Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself, to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years," the statement continues.

This follows comparisons between Palworld’s Pals with various similar Pokémon designs, leading to accusations that Pocketpair had plagiarised the species designs originally made by The Pokémon Company.

However, as of September 2025, the lawsuit is still ongoing and hasn’t seen a potential resolution yet.