A leaked Epic Games player survey featuring Palworld – followed immediately by a very pointed hypothetical from Pocketpair’s own communications lead – has crossover speculation running hot heading into the summer.
Fortnite leaker HYPEX surfaced details from an Epic survey asking players whether they had played Palworld within the previous two weeks. Epic regularly uses these surveys to gauge interest in potential collaborations, though an appearance in one is no guarantee of a deal – the studio has been known to test the water long before committing to anything official.
Pocketpair’s Palworld developer asks fans to choose a Fortnite skin
Shortly after the survey started circulating, Pocketpair publishing and communications lead John “Bucky” Buckley posted a question to fans asking which of Palworld 1.0’s new Pals they would want to see turned into a Fortnite outfit. He stressed there was absolutely no promise anything would come of it, but the timing immediately sparked crossover speculation among fans to set communities alight.
It is not the first time Pocketpair has publicly signalled interest in working with Epic. Bucky responded to Fortnite gameplay producer Robby Williams praising Palworld by suggesting that if Epic ever wanted to put the game’s Pals into Fortnite, they should just reach out. Williams had also said he would love to see Fortnite explore a creature-collecting experience inspired by games like Palworld.
Why the Timing Matters
Palworld’s 1.0 launch has given the game serious momentum again, with nearly 962,000 concurrent players on Steam during its second weekend – still below the 2.1 million peak from its 2024 early-access explosion, but one of its biggest numbers since. That kind of sustained audience is exactly the metric Epic tends to watch before pulling the trigger on a crossover.
The exchange also lands just as Fortnite prepares to launch Cuddles & Chaos on July 23, a new collection of creature-based community experiences built around Sidekicks. Epic has recently expanded those Sidekicks into scriptable NPCs capable of powering monster battlers and creature-collection RPGs – making Palworld’s Pals a fairly natural fit for where Fortnite’s design is heading right now. For more on how this fits Fortnite’s broader crossover strategy this season, the picture is becoming clearer by the week.
Neither Epic Games nor Pocketpair has confirmed that any Palworld crossover is currently in development, but with survey evidence, public flirting from both sides, and a creature-centric Fortnite update launching this week, the next thing to watch is whether anything surfaces in datamines or creative-mode assets.