Palworld patch arrives to deal with cheaters - but it may not have the fix you really crave

Palworld has become a storming hit very quickly - it was released less than a week ago and has sold 8 million copies - but that explosion in popularity has come with its own problems.

The developer has freely admitted being taken by surprise by the success story of the 'Pokemon with guns' game and the sheer number of players flocking to servers has caused trouble, as well as the bugs that need to be ironed out.

In the latter case, we've just had a patch delivered on PC which fixes some issues, and that includes dealing with cheaters.

The v0.1.3.0 update for Palworld on Steam fixes a bug where the loading screen goes on forever when logging in, which is an important one to stamp out. The patch also makes various minor tweaks to correct the world date and mistakes with text in the game.

The big introduction, though, is bringing in some countermeasures against various cheats, although we aren't given any specifics as to what those defenses (or exploits) are exactly.

They deal with cheats on the official servers, and while there isn't exactly much point in cheating yet (there's no PVP, although it's coming), nonetheless there are those abusing the game and griefing others. We've heard reports of hackers getting admin rights on servers and banning other players, for example, which is a pretty underhand trick to say the least.

Obviously, cheats will need to be fully under control by the time PVP goes live with Palworld.

At any rate, there's some important work implemented via this patch, but on X (formerly Twitter) there's some unhappiness about the Xbox version of Palworld, which appears to have some pretty nasty issues with crashing.

The other pain point is that the Xbox patch (v0.1.1.2) isn't ready, yet the Steam patch is - we don't know if the Xbox update will cure the crashing blues, but presumably it won't (and has the same raft of changes as the Steam version). Whatever the case, Xbox gamers are keen to get this one resolved for obvious reasons.

That said, even some Xbox gamers who point to the crashing being a major thorn in the side are still praising Palworld and its state for a preview release.

Meanwhile, as well as fixing all the bugs, the developer may also have concerns about the rumblings coming from The Pokemon Company as we reported earlier today. Some vague noises are being made about claims of possible plagiarism (Palworld isn't mentioned directly, mind you, but it's clear enough what the statement refers to).

Meantime, Palworld is likely to be setting further milestones, and we expect the 10 million sales mark will come swiftly enough.