The Controversy Surrounding Palworld: A Unique Gaming Experience or Legal Troubles Ahead?
Palworld, a video game that made its debut on January 19th, has already sold an astonishing number of over 7 million copies on Xbox and PC – which has also sparked controversy. Players describe the game as “Pokémon with guns,” but The Pokémon Company has initiated an investigation into the similarities between Palworld and the classic Nintendo monster-catching title.
The controversy extends beyond the brutal nature of the game’s content. In Palworld, players can indeed shoot mystical creatures and use them in a mining camp, but the main issue that has been filling gaming forums and now lawyers’ desks is the appearance of these creatures.
As an example of what divides the gaming community, user X (formerly Twitter) with the pseudonym Cecilia Fae has examined all the monsters or “Pals” in the game, pointing out the similarities in their designs to various Pokémon. Many clear examples of aesthetic resemblances have been found, but players differ on whether the changes made by Palworld’s developer, Pocket Pair, are sufficient to save the game from legal troubles.
The problem lies in the possibility that Palworld’s developers created their creatures by adapting models taken from Pokémon rather than creating them from scratch. If that is the case, without the ability to claim parody, Pocket Pair could potentially face legal action.
The discussion seems to have reached a critical point after user X, going by the name Byo Frog, inspired by the game’s “animal abuse narrative,” extracted 3D models from both Palworld and Pokémon, revealing that many of them have nearly identical proportions – which, according to former Blizzard game designer Eric Covington, is “almost impossible” to achieve by mere coincidence.
Byo Frog apologized for the scaling of the models in the comparisons, but other 3D artists have pointed out that games are rarely created on the same scale, and the different sizes of the models have little to do with artistic convergence.
This argument seems convincing enough for The Pokémon Company, which has already become involved in the controversy by sending a DMCA notice to a fan who created a mod for Palworld, replacing the game characters with Pokémon characters.
Now, The Pokémon Company has released a statement stating that it is conducting an investigation into Palworld as a whole. “We have received many inquiries about another company’s game that was released in January 2024,” the statement reads. “We intend to investigate and take appropriate actions in response to any intellectual property infringement related to Pokémon.”
The statement also includes critical remarks about the brutal gameplay in Palworld, with The Pokémon Company promising to “continue to nurture every single Pokémon and its world.”
Pocket Pair’s CEO, Takuro Mizobe, responded to the controversy in a statement given to the Japanese website Automation, stating that the company takes its games “very seriously” and has “absolutely no intention of infringing on the intellectual property of other companies.”
Neither company has taken official legal action yet. In the meantime, Shuhei Yoshida, a former high-ranking PlayStation employee, enigmatically answered “Yes” to a fan’s request for Palworld to be released on the Sony platform as soon as possible.
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The source of the article is from the blog elperiodicodearanjuez.es