‘Gears Of War’ designer “validated” over ‘Palworld’ success after similar pitch turned down by Epic

Gears Of War designer Cliff ‘CliffyB’ Bleszinski has revealed he once pitched a game similar to Palworld to Epic Games, but was turned down.

• READ MORE: Pocketpair Inc’s CEO: “We don’t want ‘Palworld’ to be beautiful and perfect. We want to inject elements of darker themes, including exploitation and violence”

Released earlier this month in Early Access, Palworld has quickly become one of the most popular games on Steam. Creators PocketPair have reported upwards of 8million copies of the game have been sold in a week while earlier today (January 26), it became only the second ever game to pass 2million concurrent players on Steam, with PUBG being the first.

Now Bleszinski has taken to social media to talk about how validating Palworld’s success has been for him.

“Palworld‘s success kinda validates my pitch that was turned down at Epic many years ago,” he wrote with his idea revolving around “medieval Pokémon with baby dragons instead.”

Responding to a fan, Bleszinski revealed that his pitch for the mobile game “just never went anywhere”.

It just…never went anywhere. I wanted to do it on mobile first.

— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) January 25, 2024

Bleszinski worked at Epic Games between 1992 and 2012 where he was lead designer on the first three Gears Of War games. He went on to co-found Boss Key Productions in 2014 but that studio closed four years later following low sales of multiplayer shooter Lawbreakers.

Earlier this year, he revealed that he turned down a big screen adaptation of Gears Of War because the script wasn’t violent enough. “People wanted to see the chainsaw, they wanted to see Locusts getting cut in half, and that would make it rated R. [Executives] wanted to make a PG-13 version of it, and I’m like ‘No, screw you guys,” he explained in an interview.

Meanwhile, The Pokémon Company has released a statement promising to look into any games that “infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon world” after numerous comparisons between Pokémon and Palworld.

“We were surprised by the comparisons to be honest, especially those labelling it as ‘Pokémon with guns’,” the creators told NME. “Pokémon definitely inspired us, but Palworld is far more action-orientated in comparison,” with the likes of Rust, Minecraft and ARK: Survival Evolved bigger influences.

In other news, a “complete” edition of Horizon Forbidden West will be coming to PC later this year as Sony confirms release date.

The post ‘Gears Of War’ designer “validated” over ‘Palworld’ success after similar pitch turned down by Epic appeared first on NME.