Move over, GTA—Palworld lets you become a wanted criminal by murdering innocent Pals

With Palworld launching into early access, players have discovered it has its own version of Grand Theft Auto‘s wanted level that brands you a criminal if you murder innocent Pals.

Palworld offers a mature take on the Pokémon formula. It lets you and certain Pals wield firearms, you can use Pals for manual labor, and you can even sell them for profit, features you’d never see in Pokémon. Unsurprisingly, it turns out there’s also nothing stopping you from callously killing the very Pals you befriended on your journey.

We’re not sure why you’d do such a thing, unless you’re particularly mean-spirited, or perhaps just morbidly curious. But much like real life, you can’t casually smack your own pets without ramifications. If an NPC spots you doing it, a Wanted sign pops up in the corner of the screen and you’re branded a criminal, with a bounty placed on your head. This can also occur if you’re caught attacking random NPCs, which sees you wanted for assault and prompts high level guards with guns to hunt you down.

You can remove your bounty yourself by taking out any and all witnesses, but we suspect many players who try this will only get themselves killed. Death is the only other way to remove the Wanted warning, but that’s obviously not ideal, since dying causes you to drop all your items (unless you’re playing on the easiest difficulty).

Palworld’s Steam listing also mentions you can eat your Pals, but we’ve yet to come across this in-game ourselves. Unless you deliberately choose to butcher them, Pals in your party can’t die: Those that lose all their health wind up incapacitated and can be revived at your home base.