Is Palworld a complete ripoff of Pokemon?

[-Blue-]

to be fair, most people aren't saying the models etc. are AI-generated, the main suspicion/allegation for that is that they threw existing pokemon into an AI generator and then based the in-game models/designs on the concepts that came out. (because this is something the dev apparently did previously on his twitter, and AI has come a long way since he did it.) i don't know if there's really any way to prove if they did or didn't, and i'm personally more inclined to believe they borrowed directly from pokemon than running it through a generator, but i'm not comfortable with the possibility or the creator's AI art stance, as someone who supports a lot of artists, which is why i'm currently leaning more towards not buying the game. (and because palworld fans have been so needlessly rude and/or passive aggressive to people questioning the designs, lumping them all in as "jealous, blinded pokemon devotees" and trying to rub in the game's success. makes me apprehensive to interact with that community at all.) there are also much more questionable comparisons than the sheep or the fox, and most people making said comparisons know that. i think it's disingenuous to act like the sheep is even close to the "worst offender" or that there's no borrowing, however heavily or legally, from pokemon at all.

Yeah I don't even know anything about this game and it's clear they're defending the game as hard as the hardcore Pokemon fans do. I went over to Reddit and other places just to try to get a basic understanding of the game and some of their comments are nasty and remind me of how the toxic Pokemon fans would react to any backlash.

 

[Belle T]

i think it's disingenuous to act like the sheep is even close to the "worst offender" or that there's no borrowing, however heavily or legally, from pokemon at all.

This actually reminds me of a point I wanted to touch on, so just as a quick aside. If the creators of Palworld did not want to evoke comparisons to Pokémon, they probably wouldn't have satirized its core premise to begin with. The general message of "it's basically a game where you capture wild animals, stuff them into tiny balls, and subject them to a life of eternal slavery" has been cheap fodder for hack comedians and two-bit media critics since 1998. It's baby's first literary critique. It is the Pokémon equivalent of "Batman flaunts his wealth and beats up mentally ill people." It is the narrative that the fifth generation of Pokémon attempted (with questionable degrees of success) to metatextually analyze with Team Plasma. So even if the designs aren't pilfered or heavily referenced, the nature of parody inherently dictates a certain level of derivativeness, because it's directly commenting on the source material.

 

[Chris]

I'm seriously debating buying an Xbox Series S to play this game.

My opinion is probably problematic but the mimicry of Pokémon's art style in Palworld's monster designs is the reason that the game caught my eye and by extension is the selling point for me. I'm a fan of the monster-catching genre in general but Pokémon has always been my favourite as far as the actual monster designs go. Naturally, something that matches them this closely is going to appeal to me. Let's be honest, that's exactly what the developers were going for when they decided to use an identical art style. This isn't a coincidence. They wanted their designs to be noticed and compared to (maybe even mistaken for) Pokémon - it goes hand in hand with Mizobe's motivation to create a popular game rather than something meaningful or original. I'm not going to touch on the AI angle here because at this point I've not done any research myself into the ethics or impact of AI in the creative industries, however, I am well-acquainted with media law due to having worked in the film industry some years ago. Enough people have produced commentary on the legality of what the Palworld developers have done though that I'm not going to bother adding to the noise.

Nintendo has made clear they're aware of this game's existence, so I'm hoping they'll do thorough research and take inspiration from it rather than solely fixating on where their intellectual property rights may have been infringed. I watched several Palworld videos yesterday showing off the world exploration and it is exactly what I wanted the open world in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet to be like - especially in terms of visual quality. When the leading developer in a genre drops the ball of course competitors will see the opportunity to rise up - we're also seeing this in response to how poorly Electronic Arts has handled The Sims in recent years with the emergence of new rival life simulation games such as InZOI and Paralives.

If anyone is looking for a monster-catching game that feels more "grown-up" than Pokémon without leaning this heavily into violence then I'd recommend Nexomon - specifically Nexomon: Extinction. Nintendo could learn a lot from this game too, honestly. But that's a conversation point for another thread.

 

[LittleMissPanda]

This made me remember Temtem and how everyone thought that would be the next "Pokémon" lolol remember when everyone thought Temtem would replace Pokémon?

But really, things like this pose literally no threat to a massive, massive juggernaut like Pokémon, which is honestly pretty sad as I feel GameFreak needs a serious wake-up call (more like Wake-Up Slap fufufufu~)

 

[Violet Witch]

I'm seriously debating buying an Xbox Series S to play this game.

I have a Series S and only heard of this game through some gamers I follow on social media. I watched one stream and was hooked before I started playing it myself and now I'm hooked and I can see why it's become a hugely popular game out of nowhere. Palworld just scratches the itch that Pokemon has failed to do for a number of years. Yet every Pokemon fan who is playing this game simply want Game Freak to take notes and bring out a truly immersive open world game that includes everything they love about the franchise.

 

[LuchaSloth]

The more that I play, the more it really feels like these characters have their own personalities and appeal. I haven't really been seeing them as Pokemon clones during gameplay. I think when you see a still image of them...it's easy to say "that looks like a Pokemon"...but when you actually experience them in-world, you just feel like you're playing Palworld, if that makes any sense. I've grown quite fond of them.

 

[Kevinnn]

Nintendo has made clear they're aware of this game's existence, so I'm hoping they'll do thorough research and take inspiration from it rather than solely fixating on where their intellectual property rights may have been infringed. I watched several Palworld videos yesterday showing off the world exploration and it is exactly what I wanted the open world in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet to be like - especially in terms of visual quality. When the leading developer in a genre drops the ball of course competitors will see the opportunity to rise up - we're also seeing this in response to how poorly Electronic Arts has handled The Sims in recent years with the emergence of new rival life simulation games such as InZOI and Paralives.

I seriously hope this is the route they take. Like, I went into this game blind (avoided trailers but was aware of its concept), and its much more than what it makes it out to be. There were some pals that I'll admit made me pause in game and Google, which is when I realized the controversy and its severity (I'm looking at you, Decidueye), but man... this game is everything I wanted Arceus Legends and gen 9 to be.

The game is stunning visually, and gameplay is good enough to keep me 20 hours ongoing and still looking forward to play. I haven't been keeping completely up to date with the Pokemon/Palworld comparisons, especially since I bought this on launch and wasn't aware at the time, but I'm definitely getting moneys worth for now lol

 

[Belle T]

One thing I will retract is my assertion that this will have zero impact on GameFreak's bottom line. The exact effects of this game obviously have yet to be seen, but not Temtem, nor Cassette Beasts, nor Yokai Watch, nor any other Pokémon competitor has ever sold this well in such a short amount of time. And that's in spite of the fact that it's only on PC and Xbox (the latter of which has been struggling to find a hit for a long time and is where Nintendo-adjacent games tend to perform the weakest), and the fact that the system requirements for the PC version, while not inordinately high, are above average for most users. In other words, for the purpose of sales, there are more things going against this game logistically than for it, and yet it's still selling tremendously well. I can only imagine how much more it might have sold if it had also launched on Switch and PS5.

It remains to be seen how GameFreak will respond to this if at all. But I no longer think that this will have no impact on them at all.

 

[nightglow]

Yeah there's no way palworld could ever run on switch. Plus I'm not sure palworld would even want their game on a Nintendo system and I would also think Nintendo wouldn't want it there either.
The numbers for palworld is from steam I believe as game pass can't be counted. I could be wrong. I don't know much about game pass.
I wonder if it will ever make it to the PS5 in the future though.
I run palworld just fine on low settings on my mini PC and it looks fine.

 

[LuchaSloth]

I haven't been so addicted to a game in a long time.

It's become common to play a few hours of multiplayer with my friends, and then log onto my solo game after that and play a few more hours. I keep playing until around 2am every night. I need to sleep. Lol

 

[Violet Witch]

I haven't been so addicted to a game in a long time.

It's become common to play a few hours of multiplayer with my friends, and then log onto my solo game after that and play a few more hours. I keep playing until around 2am every night. I need to sleep. Lol

I know the feeling, I said to myself last night I was only going to play for an hour but that didn't last and the next thing I knew a few hours had passed. Now all I'm thinking about is finding the perfect place to set up my base permanently, decorate and of course collect as many pals as possible and start breeding them etc.

 

[liliyoa]

Nintendo didn't take any legal action so I don't think so, the design and design philosophy is pretty similar though. Nintendo did a DCMA for a mod that turned them into actual pokemon, but not the game itself.
The game doesn't look that fun to me tbh, I don't get the appeal of what essentially looks like "Pokemon Gun Edition," I've barely seen any gameplay though so I could very well be wrong about thinking of it that way.

 

[Midoriya]

Is it a ripoff? No, I don't think so. I don't understand why this topic is so heated though. Who cares if it is, if people want to play it then let them enjoy it, if people don't then don't shun them for sticking to Pokemon.

Funnily enough I remember talking to Jake. (previous site moderator) in a thread that was Pokemon-related, and the question was posed on whether something like Yo-Kai Watch would eventually outsell and become more popular than Pokemon. I was (and still am) of the stance that it would never reach that point, and well, we all know how that went down now...

The reality is that Pokemon draws in so much revenue not just from the games, but the anime, merchandise, TCG, and other avenues that it would take a monumental effort for a game to dethrone it as the most popular monster-catching game. I'm not saying it's impossible, just kind of tired of seeing people brazenly state that ____ game is going to do it and in the end they're just proven wrong.

That doesn't excuse the laziness by GameFreak in their recent installations, was just giving my two cents, for what it's worth.

 

[nightglow]

I haven't been so addicted to a game in a long time.

It's become common to play a few hours of multiplayer with my friends, and then log onto my solo game after that and play a few more hours. I keep playing until around 2am every night. I need to sleep. Lol

We were playing last night and before we knew it it was 11 pm.
It's just fun. I started to breed Maus and getting the hang of the breeding mechanic. I'm trying to get good skills and try to pass off the lucky status from a different species that shares a dark element if possible, to a Mau. Afterwards I'm going to start merging Maus.
From my understanding, the passive skills don't matter for merges.
But yeah, I don't see the game as pokemon but gun edition. It plays completely different to where that stance sounds ridiculous to me. It plays closer to digimon if that.
I feel like the game turned out better than I imagined it would play, as someone who played Craftopia for a while.

 

[Sorrelfox]

It’s definitely not a rip-off imo, just another piece of media in the mons genre. Pokemon wasn’t even the first mons game, just the most popular (especially in the West, which hadn’t really had a mons game before and so considered Pokemon to be the codifying and only one). ^ - ^
And it’s obviously not going to overtake Pokemon, nothing ever will lol it’s the highest-grossing media franchise ever
Edit: no I saw Boltmane and Dark Mutant now and these designs are blatant plagiarism carry on

 

[QueenCobra]

I saw pictures of it online and it looked all right, but a lot like Pokémon, as everyone says. I know it’s controversial, but it’s also just not my thing right now, so I’m not interested. Some of the designs are cute though.

 

[CylieDanny]

Pokemon doesn't give you an option to catch people, or to beat up Pokémon. So I would say no.

I haven't played it myself, but I watched someone play a bit of it, and that's what I got off it.

Palworld is an openworld, survival game, where the Pals are there for you to catch, and then you get them to help you build your settlement.

The only semi similarity is in the designs of some Pals, and the catching factor. But the game itself is very different. Hopefully people will stop comparing it to Pokémon, once they see the actual game play of it.

I might get it if the price drops a bit more.

 

[nightglow]

It looks like Palworld cards and figurines are coming soon, I saw via youtube via a CEO twitter post. I'm not sure if the cards are an actual card game, or just cards for fans for collecting.

 

[ShinyDungeoneer]

Why do games I want launch on systems I don't have :l

 

[Snek]

I kind of like some of the designs. Depresso is one of them.