Following its early access launch on PC and Xbox last Friday, Palworld achieved tremendous success, amassing over 5 million sales and attracting over 1.3 million concurrent Steam players.
However, the game’s triumph stirred discussions regarding perceived similarities between its character designs and those of the Pokémon games.
Despite substantial differences in gameplay, social media buzzed with debates over the evident influence Palworld’s character designs drew from Pokémon, sparking questions about potential plagiarism.
On Monday, Takuro Mizobe, the game’s director and CEO of developer Pocketpair, responded to the accusations. While not denying Pokémon’s influence, Mizobe addressed the online abuse directed at Palworld’s artists, urging it to cease.
“We are currently receiving abusive and defamatory comments against our artists, along with tweets resembling death threats,” he wrote on X, as translated by VGC.
“While various opinions about Palworld have surfaced, it’s crucial to note that the supervision of all Palworld materials involves a team, including myself. I bear the responsibility for the produced materials. I would appreciate it if these comments towards Palworld’s artists would cease.”
However, the accusations against Palworld took a different turn on Sunday, with an anonymous X account claiming to present evidence not just of design inspiration but actual plagiarism of game assets.
User ‘Byo’ shared videos comparing Palworld’s in-game 3D models to those of Pokémon, asserting evidence of likely copying. While the X user acknowledged none were exact replicas, they claimed the proportions were strikingly similar to Pokémon models exported from Switch’s Scarlet and Violet games.
Maybe they're brothers? #Palworld #Pokemon #Lycanroc model from SV. pic.twitter.com/KnGSozfJGQ
— byo (@byofrog) January 21, 2024
“It’s down to Nintendo to absolutely prove copying, not merely taking influence,” he told VGC. “It’s got to be obvious copying: you look at one picture, and you look at the other alongside it.
The industry would’ve come to an end years ago if you weren’t allowed to take influence. You can’t have a monopoly on a certain style of artwork. It literally has to be copying.
“The Pokémon Company will be looking for a smoking gun, and [these 3D model videos] could be gold dust for the lawyers because they’re not just thematically similar. From what those videos show, it could be extremely compelling evidence of copying.
This "pal" from #Palword seems like it was probably a rip of serperior and primarina from #Pokemon pic.twitter.com/g8L8vBjbDG
— byo (@byofrog) January 21, 2024
“If those are original Pokémon models shown in those videos, then Nintendo should be home and dry in terms of demonstrating copying. That could be a smoking gun.”
Hoeg Law attorney Richard Hoeg commented: “I can’t speak to the ‘science’ used on this Twitter account, but certainly evidence of actual assets being stolen is the kind of thing that is likely to make a more successful case.
Simply being ‘inspired by’ existing designs, even if that goes so far as to use certain design rules (proportions, coloration, curve usage, eye size, etc.) is generally not.”
Speaking to the Japanese site Automation, PocketPair CEO Mizobe claimed that Palworld had cleared legal reviews and that there has been no action taken against it by other companies.
“We take our games very seriously, and we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies,” he said.
