Imagine having 32 million people play your video game. For most developers, it would mean success beyond their wildest dreams. The stuff of fairytales. Delirium incarnate.For Palworld developer Pocketpair, it's a heady metric that became realitydelivering fame, fortune, and (perhaps unexpectedly) some distinctly "bad vibes."Discussing the pitfalls of overnight success at GDC 2025, Palworld community manager John Buckley explains that becoming a household name in a heartbeat left the studio and its cohort of employees open to a barrage of abuse that forced the company to go dark."Shortly after Palworld was released it was super popular to hate Palworld," says Buckley. "And it wasn't just your average Twitter user jumping init was basically everyone. It was people on Twitter. It was people on Discord. It was some big industry names, which I'm still a bit salty about. It was a lot of Linkedin circle-jerking. Hating Palworld was the popular thing to do at the time of release.""The reason for that is Palworld was an impression-printing machine. You just opened Twitter and said 'Palworld' and it's half a million views."Buckley says people started spreading false stories about the project in a bid to piggyback off the game's successand in some cases maliciously stir the pot.Related:He references the allegations that spread like wildfire on social media in the early days, when people began claiming that Pocketpair had leaned heavily on generative AI technology and even stolen character models from Pokemon developer Game Freak.The latter, says Buckley, was the most serious by far although he notes it was started by "some guy on Twitter" who has now deleted his posts after purportedly explaining he started the rumor because he didn't like the "animal cruelty" in the game."All of these accusations kind of swirled into this big social media and gamer movement, where you were either on one side [or the other] of this fake war that was happening," continues Buckley. "Because there was so much attention, that meant we were getting some very not nice comments and some very scary emails."At this stage, Buckley throws up a slide that shows a number of death threats and violent messages that were sent to the studiomany of which targeted the artists working on the project."This is something that we really, really, really suffered with for a long time. This is why we went silent and why we stopped posting numbers and silly memes. We just went silent for like three or four months thinking this would die down. And it basically did."Related:Buckley apologizes to attendees for showing those messages, but says it's important for people to see the "reality" of success in the video game industry."I think a lot of companies might have crumbled under the threats"Shortly after that ordeal, Nintendo helped keep the good times rolling by filing a lawsuit against Pocketpair over alleged patent infringement. Buckley describes the situationwhich he cannot discuss in detailas "not fun."How did the team learn to cope with the onslaught of doom and gloom? "Slowly," says Buckley, before underlining how vital it is for developers to disconnect outside of work hours."You have your work time and you have your personal time. Basically make no comparisons between the two. So on a small level, we started setting timers and auto-muting apps. No Slack. No Discord. Things like that," he continues."This was hard, especially for our players, because myself and one other person were previously the main go-tos when speaking with Pocketpair. After Palworld, we had to shut down that communication flow because there was just so much coming in."The company also established internal channels to intentionally share positive feedback (from both players and industry peers) in a bid to boost morale and counter the cacophony of negativity. Employees were also told to avoid being overtly public facing to ensure they didn't unintentionally paint a target on their own back.Related:"Social media is just the worst," says Buckley. "No one should use social media."Buckley acknowledges that building those walls means the studio perhaps doesn't feel as "personal" as it once did, but says the sheer volume of negativity that some workers were facing was throwing them off kilter."We really just tried to funnel the nice stuff [towards them]," he continues. "Funnel the fan art and kind of bring back some positive atmosphere into the company."Despite facing heavy criticism, Buckley says Pocketpair managed to retain all of its employees by fostering a tight-knit work culture and working diligently to protect its workforce. "I think a lot of companies might have crumbled under the threats, under the pressure, and under the negativity," he adds.Buckley reiterates the level of success experience by Palworld isn't all bad and says the title is still "chugging along" backed by an "amazing" community.The other upside is clearly financial. The success of Palworld has enabled Pocketpair to establish a publishing division to support other studios throughout the industry, and the company has also formed a joint venture called Palworld Entertainment with Aniplex and Sony Music to expand the reach of the IP.Buckley, however, clearly doesn't want GDC attendees to forget the human cost of that success.