Palworld had an interesting release, as it was the most-played game on Steam right after 24 hours. But things took a bad turn as the game faced allegations of plagiarizing from Pokemon. Ever since this action-adventure title’s trailer was unveiled, many fans couldn’t help but notice the similarities to Nintendo’s renowned Pokemon series. Recently, Pokemon’s former Chief Legal Officer addressed the plagiarism accusations on Palworld.
Don McGowan served as the Chief Legal Officer for The Pokemon Company from 2008 to 2020. In a recent interview with GameFile, McGowan claimed the newly-released Palword is a “usual ripoff nonsense,” which he has seen a lot of times while working for the Japanese giant. However, he was “surprised” to know that there had been no actions against Palworld.
Nintendo is well-known to be extremely protective of their property. So, they never go easy on studios or games that copy elements from their projects. However, the Japanese behemoths have remained silent on the issue of Palworlds allegedly taking concepts from Pokemon. Even the fans are calling this new title from Pocket Pair a “Pokemon with Guns” game. Despite Nintendo’s silence, fans hope the creators of Pokemon might go after Pocket Pair.
Palworld’s developers and artists are already facing death threats online
While Nintendo is silent about the whole Palworld plagiarizing Pokemon situation, fans are not staying quiet about it. And they have taken a more abusive route to deal with the situation. The Palworld developers and artists have been facing multiple death threats on the internet from Pokemon fans.
The Pocket Pair CEO Takuro Mizobe addressed the issue and claimed they did take inspiration from Pokemon. However, he highlighted his artists receiving online abuse and defamatory comments. Mizobe further claimed the supervision of all materials related to Palworld is conducted by a team of which he was a part. He requested fans not to harass his artists since Palworld is Mizobe’s brainchild after all.
Despite the allegations of taking designs from Pokemon, Palworld continues to earn a lot of favorable feedback. It is one of the most-played games on Steam with mostly positive reviews. The Palworlds servers were also facing issues after the release due to high load worldwide. It would be intriguing to see how things go with the game if Nintendo plans to take legal action against it for allegedly copying designs from Pokemon.
