Palworld revises some of its most egregious creature designs for its …

Today, Palworld left early access with a massive 1.0 patch that brought an avalanche of changes and has drawn hundreds of thousands of new and returning players with the seductive allure of making creatures work in conditions that OSHA would object to if they were people.

Unmentioned in its massive 1.0 changelog, however, are a series of visual reworks the patch made to a handful of Pals that previously bore the most blatant resemblance to preexisting Pokémon designs.

I think this is all redesigns from r/Palworld

At launch, Palworld attracted derision with its inclusion of Pals that tested the definition of creative inspiration. These weren't just conceptual similarities: These were Pals constructed in Frankenstein fashion from recognizable Pokémon silhouettes, limbs, details, and design elements—often without even changing the color palette. afnews.co.za

Now, even Pocketpair seems to agree that some of those Pals were in particularly poor taste. Players have identified a number of Pals who've been reimagined to add some plausible deniability when they're compared with their Pokémon counterparts.

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Verdash, one of the Pals more commonly cited as proof of Palworld's creative indecency for being a Cinderace lookalike, has been given less-humanoid proportions and is no longer aping the legwear of its inspiration. Robinquill and Fenglope are no longer using the color palettes of Decidueye and Cobalion, respectively, and both Pals have received a detail rework to further distinguish them from their doppelgangers.

Don't worry, though. Cremis is still Cremis—and definitely nothing else.

To be absolutely clear: Palworld's character designs were never the basis of Nintendo's still-ongoing lawsuit with Pocketpair, which is instead centered around a series of patents that Nintendo holds on specific creature-capturing and riding mechanics. We could speculate that the 1.0 patch's redesigns might have been part of an as-yet undisclosed settlement agreement—but there's no immediate reason to do so. Especially considering the amount of doubt that has been cast on the validity of the Nintendo patents in question since the lawsuit was initiated.

Still, the Pal reworks are a quiet acknowledgment from Pocketpair that its creature designs weren't a sterling example of creative integrity. Now that it's made its millions, however, that's evidently a fixable problem.

But hey: At least it wasn't as blatant as Pickmos, the game formerly known as Pickmon.

I've seen a lot of complaints and concerns about the layoffs at Xbox that put 3,200 people out of work and resulted in the spinoff of four studios—eventually five, once the Arkane situation is sorted. One I haven't run across is a claim that it's all part of an effort to take jobs away from Americans and replace them with non-Americans on H-1B visas. That changed today, though, when Microsoft chief communications officer Frank X. Shaw took to social media to deny the claim.

The allegations are apparently rooted in stories like this one from Fox News, with the headline, "Fury erupts as US brand fires 1,600 employees after securing thousands of foreign worker visas."

Fox noted that Microsoft is laying off roughly 4,800 employees in total, the bulk of them from Xbox, while at the same time acquiring authorization "to hire from foreign countries 2,273 employer-sponsored, non-immigrant workers under what is known as the H-1B visa program."

Quoting a series of random people on X, the report states that "furious online critics claim that American jobs are being unfairly handed to foreigners," adding that "some online critics [have] claimed Sharma's Indian heritage played a role in firing the Americans, given the percentage of H-1B workers from India."

The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that allows US business to hire foreign workers to fill certain speciality occupations. Criticism of the program and its impact on US workers has waxed and waned over the years, but it's taken on particular prominence during the second Trump administration: Earlier this year, Trump attempted to impose a $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas, although that was eventually overturned by courts. The Republican party continues to lean into it as a wedge issue, however: Vice President JD Vance, for instance, said during a recent speech that "American jobs ought to go to American workers and not foreign fraudsters, and the Department of Labor is fighting back against it."

It's the sort of rhetoric that can lead to bad places, and the accusations of H-1B visa abuse, accompanied by plenty of naked racism, has spawned countless posts, re-posts, and likes, particularly on X—enough to prompt Shaw to speak out.

"Lots of bad information out there—let's clear it up," Shaw wrote in his message. "Recent workforce changes were made to restructure the Xbox business because it is not healthy. They were not made to replace employees with foreign workers.

"The H-1B figures being referenced are Microsoft-wide visa renewals and new hire applications. They are not specific to Xbox and represent a small percentage of Microsoft's overall workforce. And the majority of roles impacted were not American roles."

Shaw also made a point of saying that "Xbox is the largest employer of American workers in the gaming industry and the largest American gaming company," and that its CEO is "American born, raised, and educated."

Earlier this week, the US Federal Reserve appointed Sharma to a new Productivity and Jobs task force, where she will help "assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform the Federal Reserve's policy judgments."

The Palworld 1.0 update sure is a big one, and with all of the new pals, weapons, and zones to track it's easy to miss the little things—like new resources for crafting. As I climbed the revamped tech tree again, I breezed through most recipes until I ran into hardwood. It's a new tier of the basic building block you'll see pop up in later level recipes (around 40 to 50), after planks.

After deforesting a few islands, I finally realized I'd missed some spots to farm hardwood that were right in front of me. To save you the same headache, here's how to get hardwood in Palworld.

Palworld hardwood location

Make sure you gather a hefty stack and unlock a few of the surrounding fast travel statues, or just make a nearby base for easy access. You'll need 10 hardwood per High Quality Wooden Board when you unlock the craft at level 43 in the tech tree.