Palworld Embroiled in AI and Pokemon 'Plagiarism' Controversy (videogameschronicle.com) 101
Steam's newest hit survival game, Palworld, has been accused of plagiarising designs from Pokemon, as social media users negatively highlight its creator's historical association with generative AI tools. VideoGamesChronicle: Palworld by Japanese studio Pocketpair released into early access on PC and Xbox on Friday, and immediately became a breakout success, with its creator claiming 2 million sales in 24 hours. The huge launch exposure inevitably reignited discourse that has followed Palworld since its announcement, around its character designs' apparent similarities to Pokemon. Although the gameplay of Palworld is closer to survival games like Ark and Rust than Game Freak's series, many social media users have noted the obvious influences its character designs have taken from the Nintendo series.
Following Palworld's release on Friday, some X users collated perceived similarities between Palworld's 'Pals' and Pokemon. "It's not even subtle about its rip offs, how much else has it stolen?" wrote one user. Another added: "I want to like Palworld, but I don't know if I can support running existing Pokemon through a fusor and passing them off as 'new' IP." The situation is further muddled in the eyes of some by Pocketpair's historical relationship with generative AI tools. Artist Zaytri noted on X that one of its previous titles was 'AI: Art Imposter,' a game which literally utilises an AI image generator as its core mechanic. The user also highlighted multiple historical X posts by Pocketpair's CEO Takuro Mizobe, in which he appeared to praise the potential of AI image generators for content creation.
Following Palworld's release on Friday, some X users collated perceived similarities between Palworld's 'Pals' and Pokemon. "It's not even subtle about its rip offs, how much else has it stolen?" wrote one user. Another added: "I want to like Palworld, but I don't know if I can support running existing Pokemon through a fusor and passing them off as 'new' IP." The situation is further muddled in the eyes of some by Pocketpair's historical relationship with generative AI tools. Artist Zaytri noted on X that one of its previous titles was 'AI: Art Imposter,' a game which literally utilises an AI image generator as its core mechanic. The user also highlighted multiple historical X posts by Pocketpair's CEO Takuro Mizobe, in which he appeared to praise the potential of AI image generators for content creation.
Every game has elements of plagiarism (Score:3, Insightful)
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Yes, how is this different than Digimon or Yu-Gi-Oh or any of the numerous other Pokemon rip-offs? (other than the obvious "AI is taking our jorbs")
Re:Every game has elements of plagiarism (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a "style" issue - you can literally overlap the 3d assets with Pokemon assets and they match [bsky.app]. Also blatant ripoff on texturing as well [bsky.app]. And just plain overall design [imgur.com].
It sure looks like good old fashioned copy-and-paste, with "close reimplementation" at best. Not simply "cartoony monsters style".
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Exactly what *3d* AI model generator are you picturing, which creates *exact* matches of 3d assets?
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OpenApplecOpenApplev?
Re: Every game has elements of plagiarism (Score:3)
Is there a source for "the same assets"?
This guy walked back his claim right?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Palwo... [reddit.com]
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First link is pretty damning if it is as the tweet presents it.
Your second one however is nothing, oval yellow eyes and stereotypical zig zag teeth are not something anyone has any claim over. The creatures themselves do not look alike. The third one too is similar, but that is because they're both based on an eland or other spiral horned antelope. Details like hair, horns as well as body and head shape are not similar enough to be suspect.
Re:Every game has elements of plagiarism (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the depth of desperation of the "we must control the narrative" types.
For those not in the know, the people producing this nonsense of "they have a general shape of an animal in their models just like everyone else", "zigzag teeth is totally not allowed, because Nintendo owns it" etc are the twitterati degenerates who are hysterical that this game came out of nowhere, featuring themes they long suppressed to show Japanese game developers that "Western audiences hate you, and you should adopt California culture". Whereas sales numbers for the game where developers openly state that they "included firearms because that's what americans like" and "creative vision? We didn't have one. We just tried to make the game people would like"... are massive. This is against every change these people pushed with bloodthirsty zeal, unironically destroying countless lives in the process as they got people fired, slandered, and even pushed into suicide with massed twitter harassment campaigns over.
Honestly, the most damning of the critques by Rei types of twitterati far leftist degenerates that I've seen on twitter so far went like this:
"This game sucks because instead of trying to make a good game, they made a game that people like".
Because that is what they actually mean by their "oh noes, it has AI, it has slavery, it's like a lot of other games in this genre..." It's a game that is made for an audience of players, rather than far left California degenerates. And there is nothing that gets California degenerates to enrage as hard as that one game that slips past their censorious fingers and into runaway success. It's that one game that got away and got to show gamers that not everything has to be mass produced, mass censored California culture slop.
And so you get this standard twitter slander campaign, where "you aren't allowed to have zigzag teeth" is being utterly unironically chanted by the adherents in a choir. It's the only thing they know how to do.
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Palworld is 3d (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that there's "nothing" available for AI-generated 3d, but it's a lot less mature than images.
It's looking to me like Palworld is good old fashioned copy-paste plagiarism. [bsky.app]
Shame, because this may have otherwise been the first AI copyright lawsuit that actually had a chance of winning. Because it was looking like they heavily overtrained a model on a limited dataset to the point where it was practically replicating chunks of the dataset. The legal standard to meet for fair use in this context is whether the work is "tranformative". If it looks just like a copy-paste collage, that's not strong grounds to stand on.
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Looks like they copy-pasted the polygons, did some minor work to it (shuffle some body parts around?), and then probably ran the textures through an AI image generator to come up with new ones.
If the 3d models are literally ripped from the data files, that sounds like a sure-fire way to get sued. If they're 99.9% replicas copied by hand..maybe? They're definitely testing the waters here, curious how it will play out.
Re: Palworld is 3d (Score:2)
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It is conclusive that AI was not used. Palworld has trailers going back 3 years now, long before AI was mature enough to do what you suggest. We will see how close they can come to Pokemon without getting sued. Digimon came pretty close too.
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This isn't a shame at all.
Plagiarism is plagiarism, regardless of whether there's AI involved, and this drives that point home. The tools you use don't have anything to do with it. You *can* plagiarize with AI, but just because it trained on something doesn't mean that everything the AI creates is plagiarizing that thing.
Thinking that everything AI does is plagiarism tracks extremely well with very fundamental misunderstandings about how it actually works.
Impossible not to (Score:5, Insightful)
some X users collated perceived similarities between Palworld's 'Pals' and Pokemon
There are over a thousand Pokemon. It is practically impossible to avoid having similarities to some of them. If you were familiar with 0 Pokemon (impossible, I know, but bear with me) and you sat down and drew weird cute animal critters with elemental powers, how long would it be before you accidentally drew a dead ringer for a Pokemon? I'd bet it would be in the first dozen.
Re:Impossible not to (Score:5, Funny)
There are over a thousand Pokemon.
And you're expected to catch them all? Fucking hell.
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For those that don't get it, "catching 'em all" at this point requires multiple games / systems, a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, and a Pokemon Home subscription. Even then, you can't actually use them all because Pokemon Home only allows withdraws to the Switch era games and those, famously, don't contain all of the 1000+ species of Pokemon in their data. (Probably as a means to encourage maintaining Pokemon Home subscriptions under the threat of deletion if you
Re: Impossible not to (Score:2)
It's little wonder that the kids turned to piracy.
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Pokemon plagiarized real life; how is any other game in the same genre supposed to come up with inspiration if all the animals Pokemon already used for inspiration are off limits?
Take Ekans and Arbok; okay, now NO ONE can make a SNAKE.
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Quite easy, actually. I've never been interested in Pokemon and although I've seen a few over the years, I wouldn't know the names of any of them if I saw them again, although I might be able to guess that they were Pokemon. Just because you're obsessed with them doesn't mean that the rest of the world gives a shit about them.
Re: Impossible not to (Score:3)
If you tell me you wouldn't recognize Pikachu then I'll tell you you're a liar. That or you have a serious memory problem and you'd better take up some games that exercise your memory to try to stave off dementia.
I suggest Pokemon.
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I think you vastly overestimate my ability to draw living beings. I'm pretty good with ships and architecture, but my stick figures look like they had birth defects.
Pokeghibli-mon? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Scroll up in this thread.
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I think maybe some of the people going nuts about this need to go look at some manga released in the years before Pokemon's inception.
It's not exactly original itself, and when the whole point is that it draws from cultural archetypes i'm not sure that there's much purchase there.
Too late now for them to care (Score:2)
They sold 2 million copies already, even at the sale price it is now at $26 each, 2 million copies, $52M.
Even after a Steam 30% cut they are still left with $36.4M
I have to imagine that alone covers dev costs. Even if they did rip Pokemon off the lesson here is if you can generate enough hype and sales it doesn't matter, ripping people off pays.
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They're at 6 million copies and climbing. It's insane. They're also setting records for most concurrent players on Steam.
Re: Too late now for them to care (Score:2)
No one is being ripped off. This game is cool as shit. It is hilarious and fun. Everyone mad at it is a dumb fucking bitch who sucks ass.
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Well that's the accusation, I haven't seen enough to be convinced there is anything legally actionable, the line between "copy" and "inspiration" is very blurry.
Everyone mad at it is a dumb fucking bitch who sucks ass.
And here is why it's so hard to have anything close to an interesting discussion around the topic, it's already been turned into a culture-war battleground.
You really are maintaining that "gamer" reputation there buddy.
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> And here is why it's so hard to have anything close to an interesting discussion around the topic
It's hard to have a discussion around the topic because it's 3 loud Nintendo fanboys screaming about it, and everyone else not giving a fuck and enjoying the game.
There is no controversy, there's 3 loud mouths who think they matter more than they actually do.
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>the line between "copy" and "inspiration" is very blurry
Who cares? If you play the game, you worry that Nintendo might decide to go to court over it, get an injuction, something like that. That would suck if that happened. If you're literally anyone else, you don't care if they copied eevee and gave him some wool.
From a legal perspective it can be interesting, but then it becomes just a political thing- two guys talk about this or that case law precedent, someone else comes in and points out that whome
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You don't get to keep the money if Nintendo successfully sues you.
Gamers are weird. Any IP issues are for a court to work out. There's no need for Joe Console to be handwringing that "the lesson here is ripping people off pays!"
It's not AI (Score:5, Interesting)
Palworld had trailers for the game 3 years ago, long before AI was capable of this.
It's based off of an even older game called Craftopia that they also made and still maintain. I prefer Craftopia still. If Palworld is a rip-off, so is Digimon and so many other legal titles. Nobody owns an art style. Especially since the creators are Japanese, the country where this art style originated from.
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Some of the issues is the guy behind Palworld seem to be a trend chasing guy. He was involved in Survival game, NFT, and have stated positively on AI for future game. Hater basically took that and start attacking the game.
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Yeah just a quick glance at the Steam reviews and some reddit posts about it the discussion around the game has gone into the meta rather than the actual gameplay
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Is it even "the meta"? It's just some cancel attempt. Oh no, here's a guy that likes cryptocurrency and likes where machine learning is going, lets grab some pitchforks and try to shut him down with our like minded idiot squad!
Fuck all those people, they are pig disgusting.
Re: It's not AI (Score:1)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
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Palworld had trailers for the game 3 years ago, long before AI was capable of this.
It's based off of an even older game called Craftopia that they also made and still maintain. I prefer Craftopia still. If Palworld is a rip-off, so is Digimon and so many other legal titles. Nobody owns an art style. Especially since the creators are Japanese, the country where this art style originated from.
Yes, but Palworld has been in the news lately because they've sold a lot of copies... so other companies are looking for any reason to sue so they can get a slice of that. Welcome to Capitalism, those who cant do, sue.
Since this game has come out... (Score:2, Interesting)
The real controversy here is that most of the playerbase seems to be bots or the very least large swarms of computer-assisted accounts being played by a small number of people. The metrics associated with this game and the social media conversation about this game are completely implausible. Weir
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Since this game has come out I've stopped by 3 game shops, 2 comic book stores and a few comedy clubs. They're all filled with gamers. No one is playing this game and more than half of them hadn't even heard of it.
2 of my 5 immediate colleagues have been playing it since its first day of release and have been singing its praises. It's all over YouTube like a rash. I'm willing to bet at least 50% of those with Game Pass subscriptions have at least tried it, since they've already paid for it.
Regardless, anecdotal evidence is not a very useful metric.
(I also don't believe you asked everyone in the comedy clubs, but it's amusing to think you did.)
Re: Since this game has come out... (Score:2)
4 of 5 people in my immediate gaming circle has tried it (myself included). Opinions have varied on the theme, I think it's darkly funny while my pokemon diehard fried was a little put off. But the mechanics are solid reimplementations of other good games, and it's fun to play with friends. For 30 bucks I've purchased far less on steam.
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Agreed. Immense fun to play with mates and you get to slaughter those inane critters wholesale, for parts.
Not quite Satisfactory/7 Days to Die quality but it has its own charm.
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Interesting. So you think this is somehow money laundering or the like? That would make some sense. That this game is actually better than things like BG3 is not plausible. And it is in early access too. The numbers make zero sense for regular players.
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Re: Since this game has come out... (Score:2)
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Watch any of the vtubers who have picked up this game. Hololive and Phase Connect have set up dedicated servers and have people streaming the game pretty much 24/7.
And they love it.
And those vtubers collectively have tens of millions of subscribers.
It's a genuinely good game, and its popularity is deserved.
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That said, if what Palworld is doing is “plagiarism,” then surely some of the shovelware I see on the Switch store is even moreso. There are games that have names like “Ancient Souls” that are clearly stylize
Re: Since this game has come out... (Score:2)
"Since this game has come out I've stopped by 3 game shops, 2 comic book stores and a few comedy clubs. They're all filled with gamers. No one is playing this game and more than half of them hadn't even heard of it."
This game has 7 million Steam sales. I am playing it and so are five of my friends.
Your later accusations that the entire sales are fake?Are wild and bizarre and just no way they are right.
This game is a smash hit. To those who weren't following it, it is a surprise hit.
What's different with this game? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Another commenter linked to some examples in a comment up at the top but in this case it looks like the creature designs and models are very close to copies of ones straight out of Pokemon.
In the case of those other franchises while the overall gameplay and world concept is similar to Pokemon the creature designs are all bespoke, like you can tell Digimon has it's own artistic style and concepts, what's being claimed here is Palworld took shortcuts and just modified Pokemon models rather than create new one
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"Pokemon is basically the Michael Vick simulator. You're breeding animals to fight."
Now I'm curious if there's a realistic pokemon simulator, you use some form of bear trap to incapacitate them. Then have them tear the shit out of other animals.
Okay that would probably be gone off steam within a day or two...
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It's a combination of mon-game, survival base building and actual working game. Pokemon players have been asking for an open world game, and they haven't deliver. So when something that actually work and is fun came around, everyone jump on it.
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Probably that it apparently broke a steam-record for most played concurrently. No idea why.
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Why is this being brought up for Palworld and not Monster Crown, Digimon, TemTem, Nexomon, Monster Sanctuary, Coromon, Monster Rancher, or the countless other just like POkemon but different games and franchises out there?
Because they haven't sold millions of copies in the last few weeks.
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I was a huge fan of Digimon as a kid, and I can't think of a Digimon design that looks or feels like it was copied from a specific Pokemon.
But for Palworld, there are many designs that have a passing resemblance to a Pokemon design, and there are a half dozen that look like straight up trace-overs. Palworld is blowing up where the others did not for a reason, the copying is blatant.
They give them strange names too. (Score:2)
The AI part... (Score:2)
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The AI part *doesn't matter* because using AI doesn't automagically make something plagiarism.
Digimon had problems like this. (Score:1)
They drew a Mouth the same way? That's the proof? (Score:2)
Somehow I do not care (Score:2)
This game looks like something I would put down after a few minutes and never touch again.
I find it difficult to care. (Score:5, Interesting)
The game's fun, there's a reason the concurrent player peak is close to 2 million (approximately 3x what BG3's was, and that was an awesome game). Game Freak and TPC have been sitting on Pokemon since the 90s with minimal innovation on the formula as the RPG genre has evolved around them. Golden Sun on GBA in the early 2000s had a hold b to fast-forward battle messages feature; Pokemon to this day still makes you sit through a transition effect, an appear effect, several messages, and a throw-and-burst effect just to get into a battle, for every single battle in the game, with basically no improvement in this since the originals on GameBoy. They're lazy designers and I'm glad someone else finally did it better; they deserve to have their lunch eaten.
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When the Game Freak formula literally print money, why bother innovate? When something that actually tickled the Pokemon fans that wanted an open world with base building comes along and they tried it and like it.
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Palworld was made for about ¥1 billion or $6.735 million. That's not even single A level of funding. Somehow I don't think Nintendo and Game Freak can look up from the money printing press to see the light.
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It's pocket pair's first game too. While it's likely this company will be yoked and brought to heel and made to shit out terrible games exclusively, right now they are a shining star that all the big companies are seething about.
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No, this is like the guy's 4 or 5th game. He had a previous game call AI (that's a guessing game where the player is trying to figure out if the picture is AI generated or not). Their previous game is Craftopia, where the profit of that game is used to create Palworld.
Money says..... (Score:2)
Two million sales in 24 hours. I'm SURE the creator cares about all five of the twatter tards that are professional bitch and moaners about everything.
The devs / studio will be sooo sad when depositing that initial millions of dollars in sales into the bank accounts. I'm sure of it!.
If anything this should prove that with at least minimal direction and QC, users don't give a flying FUCK about if something was AI generated, or an AI assisted in the generation.
You know, kid of like how customers didn't give
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There have been ZERO evidence of using AI to generate the mons. The developers have said positive things about using AI in future games, but right now it's too much fun just making their creature by hand. The haters are just using everything including the kitchen sink against this game. I wouldn't be surprise that they're claiming the game is pro-slavery, because that something you're allowed to do.
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They do look a lot like old pokemon (Score:2)
But gamefreak abandoned it for a new, much worse style so its fine.
not plagiarism (Score:3)
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RDCWorld1 comedy team came up with this gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
State of the art AI in 2021 was 'avocado chair' (Score:1)
History with Generative AI. (Score:2)
Gotta love it when a few hardcore fanboys and... (Score:1)
The Pokemon Mod (Score:1)
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Already got taken down. Hell, the mod repository have stated that they don't want ANY Pokemon replacement mods.
Palworld is fine (Score:2)
Palworld is fine and all, but where is Ntscworld and Secamworld?