“We will investigate and take action”: the Pokémon Company raises its voice over the Palworld video game

A real sales phenomenon and an unmissable trend on social networks. In six days of marketing, the video game Palworld, created by the Japanese studio PocketPair, has already sold 8 million on PC. It breaks historical audience records, and generates thousands of videos on YouTube and Twitch. Its principle is simple: offer players the possibility of exploiting, cooking or even killing “Pals”, monsters equipped with firearms, to survive on an island.

The beautiful story runs into a major problem: these creatures are greatly inspired by Nintendo's Pokémon. From there to being able to accuse PocketPair of plagiarism? That's what the Pokémon Company, a joint venture that manages the Pokémon franchise around the world, wants to know. In a press release published Thursday, January 25, she explains having received “numerous requests regarding the game from another company released in January 2024.” Before continuing: “ We intend to investigate and take appropriate action to remedy any acts that infringe our intellectual property rights. »

The first images of the Palworld trailer, released seven months ago, had already sparked many reactions to the striking resemblance between the two universes. Some wonder if the studio did not use advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) to purely and simply copy the design of Pokémon monsters, for example using software like Midjourney or Dall-E, which allow their users to create fake images through written requests.

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The game's creator, Takuro Mizube, has often expressed his fascination with artificial intelligence (AI), which he sees as a way to end what he sees as limitations caused by copyright. His comments are now fueling suspicions of multiple plagiarism within Palworld on social networks. As revealed by Internet users, the game already imitates the music of the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo) and gameplay elements of Elden Ring È (Bandai Namco).

The Pokémon Company's press release is also intended as a warning to developers tempted to go even further in copying Pokémon games. On January 23, Nintendo already acted against a mod project (the name given to the modification of a game proposed by a third-party developer), which aimed to visually replace the “ Pals” with official Pokémon. At the origin of this project, the Australian YouTuber Toasted. The latter saw his YouTube video presenting his mod project removed from the platform for “copyright infringement” by Nintendo.

As reported by the Vice site, the Palworld game modding community does not want to attract the wrath of Nintendo and the Pokémon Company, known for being extremely litigious. Nexusworld, a server that allows developers to upload their mods, has begun removing pages that reference Palworld modifications to include “real” Pokémon.

On his X account (formerly Twitter), Takuro Mizobe denounced the harassment his teams would suffer from Pokémon fans. “We are currently receiving defamatory tweets against our artists, some of which are close to death threats,” he describes. “I would appreciate it if you would refrain from slandering the artists involved in Palworld,” he adds. The creator also defended his artistic vision. “Base building in Palworld is unique, drawing inspiration from real-time strategy (RTS) games and management games like Automation (a game that involves creating and managing an automobile company, Editor’s note),” detailed in the press Takuro Mizube.

Indeed, on Palworld, players have the possibility to do whatever they want. For example, they can create job chains where their “Pals” are tasked with making weapons. Or use these same creatures as projectiles to defeat their opponents... It is on this freedom that the popularity of the game seems to be based, particularly on platforms like Twitch.

So, will Palworld's success last or will it be fleeting? It's difficult to know, but the current buzz will have largely contributed to highlighting the PocketPair studio. The latter is used to putting on sale games likely to attract attention, but without completing their development.

Palword is the fourth game from the studio to be available in beta, and no final release date has been communicated. On the contrary, PocketPair has already announced that it is working on its next 2D game. Visually, the latter is very inspired by another game released in 2017, called Hollow Knight.