Palworld appears to be taking its efforts to blatantly copy Pokémon so seriously that its newly launched real-world trading card game is being plagued by scalpers and proving impossible to keep in stock (thanks GamesRadar). Now that’s dedication to the bit. However, unlike The Pokémon Company’s slow and half-hearted responses to its own long-running situation with scalpers, Palworld‘s TCG creators have been quick to apologize and are promising future updates on how it intends to address the issue.
Palworld: Official Card Game (POCG) internationally launched its first set (Dawn of Palpagos) on July 30 of this year. The two-player game from Bushiroad (Shodowverse: Evolve, Cardfight!! Vanguard) is true to the “Pokémon with guns” video game, with a mixture of gun-toting combat and resource gathering, alongside base-building, soul-using and, well, watch this:
It has, you’ll likely not be surprised to learn, proved very popular. Any first set of any game tends to be highly sought after, given that’ll be the one collectors get most excited about in 20 years’ time. But it seems it’s proven far too popular, and a combination of scalpers and shortages are getting a potential community pretty riled. Hence and apology from the card game’s official X account.
#パルワールドカードゲーム
【ブースターパック第1弾「パルパゴスの夜明け」につきまして】現在品薄の状況が続いており、楽しみにしてくださっている皆さまに商品を手に取っていただけない状況となっておりますこと、心よりお詫び申し上げます。…
— パルワールド オフィシャルカードゲーム公式 (@PalworldOCG) August 12, 2026
Via machine translation (and not Grok’s), the post begins, “We sincerely apologize that the product remains in short supply, preventing many of you who are looking forward to it from purchasing it.” Issuing the same sort of response took The Pokémon Company about three months.
Bushiroad continues, “We are currently considering measures to ensure the product can reach a wider audience. We will provide a further update regarding our next steps in the near future,” before then profusely apologizing once again.
According to GamesRadar, one of those immediate next steps is a restock in Japan, where all the product will be sold at pop-up stores without shrink wrap. Obviously no one should ever buy new TCG cards without shrink wrap unless it’s from the creator itself, so this should stymie the efforts of the scalpers. And it’s a good thing too: A day into the new TCG’s launch, Palworld cards were going for as much as $4,000. At the time of writing, English-language booster boxes with an MSRP of around $50 are starting on eBay for at least $160 and often reaching close to $200.
Early reviews of POCG looked pretty good, until I noticed that all the ones I’ve found on rival gaming sites are accompanied by the teeny-tiniest writing revealing they’re paid ads, subtle enough that the LLMs don’t notice. But it at least looks like it has some interesting mechanics, and isn’t just a copy of the Pokémon TCG. It’d be nice to find out for myself, but it’s sold out everywhere I’ve looked.