Palworld criticised for plagiarism and AI art accusations, but what’s the truth?

Selling over five million copies in just three days, PocketPair’s Palworld is a certified success. However, fans of Game Freak’s decades-popular Pokémon series have accused the game of heavy plagiarism.

Alongside plagiarism accusations, Palworld has also been criticised for potential use of AI generated artwork. But is there any truth to these claims?

As for the plagiarism claims, Palworld is more than obviously inspired by Pokémon. In fact, we noted in our Palworld review that PocketPair’s open world survival game takes more than a few cues from the popular RPG series, even down to using the same eye designs.

PocketPair is based in Japan, the same as Pokémon developer Game Freak, and the region has often experienced controversies surrounding copied works. For example, the popular anime Pretty Cure has been said to be a clone of Sailor Moon; western works such as WINX have also been said to be the same with the same stereotypes such as transformation sequences.

However, these sequences are indicative of the genre nowadays, and Palworld’s genre of Monster Collecting in a similar vein to Pokémon isn’t really the problem, its art. Fans have pointed out that some of the Paldeck creatures have designs too similar to official Pokemon for comfort.

Lamball, one of the earliest Pals you’ll encounter in the game, is an extremely round sheep, just like Wooloo from Pokemon Sword and Shield. Sparkit, an electric Pal, has a long tail with a thunderbolt in the end, just like Raichu. Tanzee, a grass-type monkey, is very similar to Grookey, Cremis is a mix of Gigantimax Evee and Alcreamie, and many more.

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Heavy inspiration isn’t the same as plagiarism, and while Palworld does copy a lot of Pokémon’s design language to the point where some creatures could be official mons, it’s not a direct rip off. In the US at least, you cannot copyright an art style, hence why American Dad looks like Family Guy, or why Dreamworks copied Pixar.

On the other side, Palworld developer PocketPair has been accused of using AI generated art to create its monsters. At the time of writing, this does not appear to be true. While it could explain why so many official Pokémon elements have made their way into the game’s designs, it’s yet to be proven.

It is true that PocketPair does have a history with AI art. The studio’s previous game, Art Imposter saw players commanding an AI to create pictures. However, there’s no evidence that generated content has been used in the design of monsters.

Furthermore, Palworld has been in development for around three years, prior to the mainstream release of AI tools such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. However, with the games now being available for the past year, there is a chance that it could be using AI artwork somewhere in the game.

Even without a Palworld PlayStation Port or a Palworld Nintendo Switch port, PocketPair’s early access game is likely to be one of the most popular games of the year.

Palworld is available right now on PC and Xbox, as well as on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.