Palworldhas completely exploded in popularity over the past few days, becoming one of Steam’s most played games and overtaking the likes of 2023 behemoths such asStarfieldandBaldur’s Gate 3. Not only did it manage to amassa whopping 200,000 players just a few hours after its early access release, but it recently announced it already has over one million players across all platforms.
That’s a lot of attention, probably a lot more than developer Pocketpair was expecting. Unfortunately, not all of that new attention is positive, as the Pokemon community appears to have caught wind of the title and have been shredding Palworld to pieces over its “stolen” and “lazy” designs. Over the past few days,Pokemonfans have been gathering as much evidence as possible to accuse Pocketpair of stealing popular Pokemon designs and mashing them up to create new creatures.
Twitter user AutumnRaptor1 is one such person that has accused Pocketpair of stealing, sharing various images of certain Pals next to their supposed Pokemon equivalents. Another user called Onion_mu even went so far as todocument every single example of jumbled Pokemon features they could findin Palworld’s creature designs. A Cinderace clone is probably one of the more obvious examples, with one Twitter user claiming that it hasthe best chance of causing Palworld to be sued.
This is a COMPLETE carbon copy. The only difference this thing has between Cinderace is it’s a Grass type.
You then have the Pokemon fans not particularly offended by the Palworld designs, but more that taking such heavy inspiration is “incredibly shady and lazy”. For example, Twitter user LuxxArt wishes that Pocketpair had made “something original” and that the heavy inspiration makes Palworld’s monsters “lack identity”.
Even if you’re being as generous to Pocketpair as possible, you can’t get around the fact that some of these designs are very similar to existing Pokemon. While it might be going a bit too far to claim it’s stealing, there are very clear inspirations being used that’s getting Palworld in a bit of bother with Pokemon fans. Of course, Palworld sets itself apart by being a different genre and appealing to a more adult audience, what with its human capturing mechanics and raunchy Pals that want to bang human beings.
Those on Palworld’s side claim that the similarities are so obvious because the game is clearly a parody of the Pokemon series, therefore taking heavy inspiration is fair game. Whichever side you fall on, it’s clear that there’s an appetite for a more adult Pokemon experience with some real money and weight behind it, and you’d be surprised if that game’s massive success hasn’t turned at least one head over at The Pokemon Company. We’ll have to wait and see if it decides to do something about it.
