Fact Check: Has Palworld Copied Pokemon’s Designs?

After the upcoming Indiana Jones title was accused of copying Uncharted, the newly-released Palworld has come under plagiarism allegations. Fans claim the game has plagiarized numerous features from Nintendo’s famous Pokemon series.

Pocket Pair developed Palworld, an open-world action-adventure game. The game has multiple unique creatures called “Pals” that players can battle and capture. Later, the those creatures help you fight others, travel, and construct bases. Since its announcement, many people have compared the concept of Pals to the “Pocket Monsters” from the Pokemon franchise.

since I’m bored as hell, I’m gonna be making a thread of this i think… Palworld design analysis trying to spot every pokemon they jumbled together pic.twitter.com/Ch9jcx5hCI

— onion_mu (@onion_mu) January 18, 2024

This 2024-released game became an instant hit on Steam, becoming the most-played game on the platform within 24 hours. Palworld’s gameplay is similar to Ark: Survival Evolved. However, it was difficult to overlook the similarities with Game Freak’s masterwork. Fans even analyzed how the Pals possibly stole Pokemon’s designs. Because of these issues, many fans nicknamed the game “Pokemon with Guns.”

Pocket Pair’s history with generative AI has worsened the situation

The case of Palworlds plagiarising Pokemon worsened when the developer Pocket Pair’s relationship with generative AI surfaced. The studio previously released a game called AI: Art Imposter, an AI drawing party game. The players can instruct the AI to make images without requiring any aesthetic skills to create beautiful artwork.

Furthermore, Pocket Pair CEO Takuro Mizobe has complimented generative AI, recognizing its enormous potential. In an old tweet, Mizobe stated that generative AI technology might one day be powerful enough to make art without violating copyright laws. Many artists are lately denouncing AI for taking over their work and exploiting their artworks without permission to train AI technology.

here’s the CEO of Pocketpair talking about using AI to bypass copyright, generating fakemons with it, calling AI: Art Imposter a real-time image generation game, and being excited for games powered by GPT-4 pic.twitter.com/79xwZr0yEI

— Zaytri #StrikeForPalestine (@imZaytri) January 19, 2024

The Pocket Pair CEO has previously posted on how AI may be used to produce new Pokemon designs. Although Mizobe’s postings do not indicate that Palworld plagiarized Pokemon’s character designs. Many fans believe this is true because Palworld was built by an inexperienced staff.

Palworld is currently enjoying the success with fans praising the gameplay and visuals. It has very positive reviews on Steam. As for Nintendo, they are still quiet about the situation. It would be intriguing to see if the Japanese behemoths would have anything to say about this situation. After all, Nintendo is known to be quite strict about its property.