Palworld community supervisor admits the survival game is “ripe for toxicity” and has a easy resolution: “You factual call ’em losers and likewise you kick ’em”

Palworld developer Pocketpair offers a straightforward approach to dealing with toxic players: remove them from the game and label them losers. And just like that, I suddenly feel compelled to play some Palworld.

During a talk at the Game Developers Conference 2025, Palworld’s community manager John ‘Bucky’ Buckley addressed the widespread issue of unpleasant individuals participating in online gaming. This is a challenge that every developer behind an online game must confront, but even with 32 million players to observe, Bucky and Pocketpair are prepared to handle it all effectively.

“Just kick ’em,” Bucky stated. “You simply call ’em losers and you kick ’em out. Then they tweet saying, ‘Bucky called me a loser,’ and I just go, ‘yeah, you’re a loser, dude.’

Bucky elaborated that due to Palworld’s global popularity, Pocketpair has “one or two” moderators for each region and “an army” of English-speaking moderators. None of these moderators are automated; they are all equipped to identify and remove toxic players without discrimination.

“Honestly, they’re quite straightforward. We’ve instructed them to be as strict as necessary,” Bucky shared. “Palworld is a game that’s somewhat prone to toxicity. It’s a survival game and features multiplayer. It’s checking all the boxes for problematic individuals. Combine that with the furry community, and those elements do not mesh well. The Palworld Discord is chaos around the clock. Early on, we stated, if people are misbehaving, just boot them. I mean, who cares at this point? What are they going to do?”

Despite Palworld’s remarkable success, I would concur that toxic players are the least of Pocketpair’s worries. Bucky mentioned during the same GDC panel that Nintendo’s copyright lawsuit “came as a shock” to the studio because patent infringement