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A person holding a glowing blue ball, which floats about their palm. This image is part of an article about the Palworld CEO responding to plagiarism allegations.
Category:
Video Games

Palworld CEO Responds to Plagiarism Accusations

Image of Chris McMullen
Chris McMullen
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Published: Jan 22, 2024 11:50 am

Following plagiarism allegations that Palworld copied its monster designs from Pokémon, developer Pocketpair’s CEO has issued a response. Has it cleared things up? Well, not exactly.

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Palworld, the recently released game that features Pokémon with guns game, has proven ridiculously popular. Its Early Access/Game Preview incarnation has, according to SteamDB’s figures, become the most popular non-free-to-play game on Steam, beating even Cyberpunk 2077‘s record with over 1.5 million concurrent players.

But it’s been suggested that the game’s Pokémon analogs, Pals, are not just inspired by Pokémon but are actually copied from various Pokémon games, potentially with the involvement of AI. It doesn’t help that one of Pocketpair’s previous games, AI: Art Inspector, has players issuing commands to create AI art.

As reported by VGC, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe tweeted out a response to the plagiarism allegations, saying that Palworld artists have been receiving death threats. The tweet is in Japanese, but according to the reasonably reliable Google Translate, it reads:

“I have received a variety of opinions regarding Palworld, but all productions related to Palworld are supervised by multiple people, including myself, and I am responsible for the production. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from slandering the artists involved in Palworld.”

Mizobe isn’t specifically addressing the alleged plagiarism and AI use, but he’s taking a the-buck-stops-here approach to Palworld‘s production.

However, as VGC also notes, one Twitter user has been comparing the models in Palworld to those in Pokémon Violet and Scarlet. And according to that user, their models and proportions are very similar to the creatures in Game Freak’s games.

The alleged involvement of AI muddies things further. Mizobe has, it seems, previously tweeted about the possibility of using AI to generate “new” Pokémon. There’s still no confirmed evidence that Palworld has used AI, but it seems unlikely this situation is going to go away any time soon.

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Image of Chris McMullen
Chris McMullen
Chris McMullen is a freelance contributor at The Escapist and has been with the site since 2020. He returned to writing about games following several career changes, with his most recent stint lasting five-plus years. He hopes that, through his writing work, he settles the karmic debt he incurred by persuading his parents to buy a Mega CD. Outside of The Escapist, Chris covers news and more for GameSpew. He's also been published at such sites as VG247, Space, and more. His tastes run to horror, the post-apocalyptic, and beyond, though he'll tackle most things that aren't exclusively sports-based. At Escapist, he's covered such games as Infinite Craft, Lies of P, Starfield, and numerous other major titles.
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