The Pokémon-like shooter 'Palworld' is being criticized for plagiarism and accused of having used AI to create its monsters. Now the Devs are speaking up.
Over the weekend, the action-adventure game Palworld shattered a series of records. With up to 1.6 million concurrent players, it has outperformed games like Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3. According to the developers, it sold 6 million copies on Steam within 4 days.
However, it's not only positive news and feedback that surrounds the surprise hit. The developers were accused of stealing their monster designs from the popular monster-collecting game Pokémon. Now, the Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe has spoken up
Palworld Developers Insist on Legitimacy Amidst Similarity Claims
Already before the release of Palworld on January 19, the CEO of the dev studio stated in an interview with Automaton that 'Palworld has cleared legal reviews, and that there has been no action taken against it by other companies.' Furthermore, he emphasizes, 'We take our games very seriously, and we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies.' He describes Palworld as hardly similar to Pokémon, having other influences that had a much greater impact on the game, namely Ark: Survival Evolved.
After the recent allegations, which had solidified over the weekend, Mizobe has now spoken up on Twitter.
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— Takuro Mizobe | Craftopia, Palworld (@urokuta_ja) January 22, 2024
The creative team at Pocketpair is plagued by hate comments and death threats. Furthermore, he explains that all productions within the scope of Palworld are monitored by him and other staff members. He requests that the artists involved in Palworld not be further harassed.
He did not specifically address the concrete allegations.
The Allegations Ranged From Plagiarism Of Pokémon And Other Games To AI Art Theft
That the Pals in Palworld strongly resemble Pokémon should be no secret. One could even argue that this similarity is one of the factors contributing to the game's great success. A Twitter user took the effort to compare all existing Pals with their Pokémon counterparts.
However, it looks like Pokémon was not the only 'inspiration.' Animations and user interfaces are very similar to various other games, namely the battle royale shooter Fortnite and the dinosaur survival game Ark.2. This one, also posted a lot on Twitter. Exact same face, same teeth placement, white and yellow eyes, identical pic.twitter.com/asmlDfHlTL
— Cecilia Fae (@CeciliaFae) January 21, 2024
I am the exact opposite of a Nintendo stan (or a Ark/Wildcard stan), but seeing Palworld make tens of millions of dollars off of the most blatantly creative bankrupt, poorly put together asset flip game is so depressing. Their entire company strategy seems to be theft. pic.twitter.com/bRQxilrh94
— TeeHallums (@TeeHallums) January 20, 2024
This also seems to be a recurring approach for Pocketpair. Both their earlier games and an upcoming title have clear templates.
The 2020 release Craftopia, which is still in Early Access, draws heavily from Breath of the Wild. The upcoming title Never Grave, scheduled for spring 2024, casually adopts its look from Hollow Knight.
Moreover, looking at the tweet history of the Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe quickly reveals how this company's philosophy came to be.
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
He expresses enthusiasm about bypassing copyright laws using AI and even posts pictures of AI-generated Pokémon. Naturally, speculation arose that the Pals in Palworld could also have been created using AI. These tweets are, of course, not proof of this assumption; the developers themselves stated in a blog post that a single person, a recent graduate without professional experience, created over 100 monster designs by themselves.
Players, on the other hand, defend the game's legitimacy simply because it's fun.
Game is pretty fun if you asked me. by u/Ares_carries in Palworld