“Drew like a dark, fucked up version of Pokémon haha. Just a glimpse into my dark reality. A full stare into my twisted perspective would make most simply go insane Imao”

It honestly just feels like someone took those “if Pokémon was realistic” videos where Pikachu said fuck every minute and trainers were abusive and made it a video game

Digimon's "cute" rookie monsters, like Agumon, Gatomon, Patomon, etc, don't look like they were copy-and-pasted from a collection of Pokemon parts. (That Palworld rooster is definitely using Starly's CGI model.) And Digimon's more powerful monsters look even more distinctive. Palworld didn't try to make their monsters original because without the Pokemon angle, what would they actually have? A grindy farming game. BTW a lot of Digimon have guns (and some are made of guns) so if monster pals with guns is what you actually want, just play Digimon Cybersleuth. It's on the Switch. :)

I feel like the color palettes are so similar because they want you to draw associations in your head with specific pokemon. They aren’t trying to hide the plagiarism. They just need them to be different enough for some legal debate and other than that, they want to get as much money as possible from people who are nostalgic about pokemon and will feel the same about ripoff designs.

The biggest offence this game made in my humble opinion is the complete mish mesh of art styles. Like there are some pokemon-lookalikes who look genuinly a lot like the cartoony style of pokemon. Standing on top of a fairly realistic looking nature and then the humans look like they came from a completely different anime. None of it looks good together and I can't figure out the thought behind it.

Palworld is less Pokemon with guns and more Ark: Survival Evolved with Pokemon. From the way you have to mine and smelt the metal you need for each and every bullet to the way you can max out the sliders at character creation to play as a deformed monstrosity. Edit: you said basically the same thing.

One thing that bothers me is that they seem to have taken so many decisions saying "let's do X so that the internet will do Y". "Let's add a furry bait Pal so they'll make fanarts", "let's add creepy descriptions so they'll make top 10 scary lists", "let's add a weed Pal so they'll make memes like they already made with that one pokemon a couple years ago". At least Pokémon feels organic, like all this funny stuff just comes from the sincere enthusiasm of fans and not just because it was a marketing strategy (or if it was, at least it was well hidden).

TBH, a lot of the Palworld designs look to me like they got their start from those pokemon fusion generators. As if someone created a whole bunch of random ones and then the game developers just went 'okay, move this a little to the left and it's good enough!'

Palword plagiarism? Call that palgiarism. Thank you thank you I’ll be here all night!!!

there is one thing not mentioned in this video that i find absolutely despicable about this game. The Delphox knockoff isn't just a knockoff of the Pokemon design. It DIRECTLY STEALS EVERY SINGLE DETAIL of a Fanmade mega-delphox design by Pyroaura98. It sickens me to my core how Pocketpair don't just settle for plagiarizing a larger property, but that they would stoop so low as to steal designs made by small creators who dont have a platform to push back

my favorite way to describe this game is that it's what you'd get if you gave a budget to an eleven year old who thinks pokemon is for babies because it doesn't have guns

The early trailers actually have more appealing graphics to me. I’m so sick of the default “realistic” Unreal engine map textures combined with low poly cell shaded character models. It’s just lazy and looks so bad. The characters do not match the world. But making a cell shaded map in unreal is more work than using default materials, and likewise making detailed characters/pals to match the detailed map textures is more work. That’s why it feels so uninspired. Both the map textures and the character textures are just whatever option is the easiest and require the least amount of effort. And this isn’t even really debatable due to how NO assets from craftopia were made by them, they would rather just do the bare minimum

Something i haven't seen mentioned at all in these discussions is that Nox's model is suuuper similar to a fakemon from pokefarm called Kinaster. A lot of the models are similar to various existing fakemon, but this is the one i noticed right away

As a designer, what strikes me about Palword's designs is it appears they have had only one type of reference. If you reference only 1 thing as a designer, (in this case Pokemon) then all you're doing is remixing another designer's work with their work and all your designs just end up looking like the referenced designer's work. Hence why every Pal looks plagiarized in varying degrees from blatant 3D model reskins to lesser just "mixed parts of varying Pokemon." It appears to me like a nooby mistake at best, or maliciousness at worst. Given the story you've told about the studios nativity and inexperience, I hope it's the former.

I mean, we can all see that basically every Pal is composed of Frankensteined together Pokémon design elements, right? Some are complete mishmashes and others are barely changed, but either way the pieces are all still there-to suggest the Pal team didn’t literally have a complete list of Pokémon designs in front of them for reference while making these creatures is, I think, totally absurd.

“If you have never played ARK count yourself lucky” I feel this so hard rn

When you take into consideration that the CEO of pocket pair, Takuro Mizobe is a major shareholder of a Crypto company called Coincheck that deals in NFTs and currencies, as well as being a general AI art lover in his spare time, it becomes quite easy to see how his techbro mindset bleeds into this game. This game is pretty much exactly like the recent wonkaland incident. People who think AI art and NFTs are equivalent to real art don't care about actually investing care and integrity into what they make with their own hands. They dont care that they steal from people, they dont care that their product is incoherent and scattered, they dont even know what makes it wrong.

Another important thing to note is Pocketpair, as we speak, is making a game that clearly rips off Hollow Knight and its art style. To blatantly plagiarize from a AAA company is one thing, but an indie team of three people is a different matter entirely, and it's frustrating that so many people either don't even realize or just deny it the same way they do with Palworld.

Video idea: would love to see a deep dive on Sea Monkeys, how they got generations of kids to want to keep pet brine shrimp, etc

My thing is everyone keeps talking about how it looks better than Pokemon lately but that don't mean it looks good the mishmash of the weird creatures with the hyper realistic backgrounds and GTA style guns just looks like one of those VR chat rooms with every single person with a different art style or that crossover episode between Lilo and Stitch the series and the TV show Recess just awful clashing styles It all just makes my brain scream You Don't Go Together

My issue with Palworld is one that no one else seems to bring up because they're too focused on the plagiarism-not-plagiarism stuff. Palworld marks THREE games that the dev, Pocketpair, has in Early Access *simultaneously.* Craftopia has been in EA for *three years* and instead of finishing it they decide to make a second, almost identical game, even re-using assets from Craftopia. It's just so obviously a cash grab, they cobbled it together from old code and assets they already had and it'll sit in EA for half a decade with their other games they abandoned now that they've wrung the money out of people who were willing to buy it.

My beef with Palworld is the simple fact that everything about this game feels so derivative. You can draw a straight line between any random aspect of this thing and the point of "inspiration" that they lifted from almost immediately. When you look at something you don't think "Oh, this is something cool and unique to Palworld!" Instead you think "Oh, this is that thing from Zelda, or Elden Ring... or this is just Suicune with extra steps."

One side of the argument that people don’t understand is that something can technically not be a direct copy, but still feel like it’s being plagiarized simply because it doesn’t add it’s own creative spin. Palworld is a classic case of that I thought more people would be better aware of plagiarism especially after that Hbomberguy video

My problem is that these designs are specifically done to invoke “Pokemon”, and the gameplay (while fun IMO), clearly seems like someone try to be “edgy”. Tons of fantasy/card game/monster collecting franchises around the world have been to make designs that are generally unique and do not invoke these comparisons for me (even if some are obviously inspired). Digimon, Neopets, Bakugan, Chaotic, Yugioh, Yo-Kai Watch, etc.

Funny enough, the Pal that caught my eye the most is 'Bushi'. The moment you showed it on screen I went like 'Isn't that from Yo-kai Watch?' and yes, 'Bushi' is pretty much a carbon copy of the Yo-kai 'Sheen'. So it seems like the 'Inspiration' (as the cool 'totally-not-clinically-online' kids call it) is not limited to Pokémon. And yes, it seems there are also things taken from Monster Hunter. And the chicken is literally just the Story of Seasons brand chicken. I literally went from 'They stole it all designs from Pokémon' to 'People completely blew this out of proportion' to 'Are any of the designs original?' during the video. I rate Pal world 7.8/10 - too much plagiarism!

what cracks me up was people saying "this looks so much better than Pokémon" meanwhile it literally looks like Mario in Unreal

I swear this game has big Newgrounds in 2003 energy

I love how one of the main creatures is literally just Totoro but painted yellow.

Thing that gets me, obvious bits aside, is that even the most original designs have something that feels clearly intended to cue some level of familiarity. Tombat evoking Lunala for me really made it click, there is always something. Posture, proportions, patterns, pallets, there is always at least 1 element. I think there are under 5 pals that feel like I'd be reaching to say some element of them is nearly 1 to 1 from something else.

No.072 "Bushi" and No.058 "Pyrin" are directly copied from Yokai Watch Bushi is a copy of Kusanagi and Pyrin of Genjuu Kyryn "Bushi" is at least changed enough to be passed off as a just extremely heavily inspired design of Kusanagi but "Pyrin" is beyond blatant, with the entire model 1:1 based on Yokai Watch 4's Genjuu Kyryn model down to the smallest details and even color palette, with the only thing changed that genjuu kyryn's tail was replaced by his konten counterpart from Yokai Watch 2 they really shouldn't have gotten a pass.

This is the first I've seen of a lot of the pal designs and I have to say, some of them are the kind of thing where people would look at them and be like "oh there's only so many ways you can make a creature based on x animal" but like... there are ways Other than how pokemon has done it. For example, yeah, hedgehogs are easy to simplify into small cute creatures, but I have seen many cartoon variations of hedgehogs that don't get as close to shaymin as jolthog does. Like, some of the pals I could look at and just squint my eyes and try real hard to make a comparison to literally any pokemon but jolthog immediately jumped out as looking like shaymin. there's definitely other pals that have similar immediate "this basic animal somehow looks nearly identical to this specific pokemon" too Edit to add: as I saw somewhere else in the comments, it doesn't really matter how many good/original designs exist in something like this, it doesn't really matter if there's fun parts of the game, if there's "features pokemon would never give us even though we want them" (hate that argument btw): anything that seems too heavily inspired by pokemon (rather than just regular inspiration) even if not blatantly stolen puts just a sour cloud over the entire thing. The good designs are soured by the fact that maybe there's some other source (non pokemon) that those designs were copied from that we just missed. I know there's at least 1 pal in there that seems nearly 1 to 1 copied from a fakemon so like, idk, who knows what they might've ripped from. And another addition: there are some of these designs that just feel like if you described a pokemon to someone who has never seen any pokemon before and asked them to draw it, or used the description as an ai prompt

One issue I have is people saying "Pokemon doesn't own X design/concept" which is true obvs, but when we're discussing a game with multiple cases of obvious plagiarism against pokemon that defence goes out the window. If the only cases of plagiarism were ones like Univolt and Woolipop then I'd agree that it would be a weak argument and Pokemon doesn't own those concepts, but given the abundance of obvious plagiarism I think it's fair to compare those cases as well as plagiarism isn't always as obvious. In this video alone we even see multiple examples of the developers trying to disguise their plagiarism by copying multiple pokemon at once, like with Killamari or Dumud.

(not finished with the video) personally my issue with the plaguarism in the game is not that pokemon the giant company is being plagiarized, but that the individual artists who work for the company are having their designs stolen, not to mention the many fanmade fakemon that were blatantly stolen to be used in this game with no credit for the designers either. it's primarily an issue of artistic integrity rather than "game is ripping off much bigger, more mainstream game"

You can debate forever about how similar some Pals are to Pokémon, but it is blatantly obvious that there is little to no originality in most of those designs. Mind you, plagiarism doesn't only refer to 1-to-1 copies. If you plagiarize someone else's work when writing a scientific paper, retelling their content without marking it as a quote and passing it off as your own is just as much plagiarism as literally copying every word. There is no doubt that the designer of these Pals went through a list of Pokémon models and made her own with them on a second screen. As for the reason, it is known that the woman who made all of those herself was under extreme pressure. She had laughably little time, she came from a long stretch of failed applications and had to prove herself, and she was probably heavily underpaid - providing she was paid at all. I absolutely don't blame her, but I do very much blame the management of the dev studio. They absolutely knew what they did to her. That's unacceptable exploitation of a young employee.

My least favorite take on the game has honestly been that Pokemon deserves to be stolen from for being a big property and I think that is mad weird.

There are so many instances where izzy just casually glosses over a Pal that i can very distictly see how they ripped something like the eyes or head shape of a 'mon

From the moment I saw Grizzbolt I said "that's My Neighbour Totoro"

My huge issue with palworld is the CEO is huge into A.I Generative art, NFTs and crypto. Not saying palworld used A.I for the designs but the creator is a PoS so I rather not support him financially

I was thinking "hm, maybe I'd play this?" and then I found out Lovander exists and I don't want to risk having to look at that... thing ever again

honestly i always thought palworld looked bad (it looks like a mishmash of pre-made assets, everything looks like its from a different game and it doesnt seem intentional) and that the premise was a little bit dumb. the mix between the cute stuff and the really dark and gritty elements doesnt feel natural, it feels like the entire point is that you go "oh my GOD it has GUNS" and the moment that initial shock wears off it starts getting annoying. i like meshing dark elements with a cutesy exterior but this isnt how you do it. feels like its not meshed as much as its hot-glued on

unfortunate thing is that once you see a few designs blatantly copied, it really ruins the rest of them that are simply inspired bc all I can think of is that the team was thinking "how close can we get this to looking like these pokemon" opposed to "let's be inspired by this pokemon/concept and roll with our own thoughts". Obviously many were just inspired on similar concepts, but hard to shake the idea they were just trying to get as close as possible to be lazy :/ Had the blatant copies not been in there, I'm sure it would have tainted the rest of them less

not an accusation to the writer of course, but when that journal entry at 50:53 was read out loud, something about it just seemed off. the repetition of a singular idea / word, the lack of specificity, the common trope of someone questioning higher power in the form of a journal entry, makes it feel almost artificial. perhaps the aim was to be overly vague and to drill in the idea of the 'island' and 'tower' being largely plot relevant -- but as someone who has played around with ai prompt writing, i can't help but feel like it shows some common hallmarks of being ai generated. again, not an accusation, just a slight suspicion i wanted to point out and its def not worth disproportionate controversy. (51:43 isn't as bad with this, so that assures me somewhat)

My main issue with this game is that people seem to be incapable of being normal about it. People either hate on it to such an extent that they twist literally every aspect of the game into something negative, or achieve previously unseen levels of meatriding for the game and its devs. Like the way the average palworld fan talks about the game would get you called a fanboy in any other fandom. I usually dislike the "centrist" approach but this video is actually someone being normal about the game and it's such a breath of fresh air.

The dark, edgy entries are just dog shit. The reason some of the Pokedex are dark and creepy is because its unexpected. You have this cute balloon with a tuff of hair, smiling innocently at you but apparently it'll take children that have grabbed its arms, and just... kidnap them. Ten entries of cute, snuggly entires, with one that talks about this dino wearing their dead mother's skull. Its balanced and unexpected, making every entry dark just... makes it cringe.

oh, by the way. by messing with surfent VERY heavily, i actually **clipped through the world barriers that stop you getting to the big tree!** if you want to know what it's like there.. - menus and most ui disappear until you leave the tree's boundaries, some areas make you physically shake, and textures move - you cannot get off your mount, if you're on one - game is saving forever? - autofeeding bag doesn't work. you can't open the menu to feed yourself. starvation. i can only assume it's like.. a floating point error, maybe? idk. the tree is not solid i don't think, hollow inside, there's nothing there. tablet lied :( please thank slinky the surfent for getting me there!!

In my opinion, palworld designs feel like copied homework. When you copy homework, sometimes you don't write the exact same sentence as the original, other times you alter the order of the words, and other times you just copy. This finished homework may have some effort put into it because it's not the same as your friend's, but if you pay attention to what's written, you can tell something is strange.

I can't say I agree with most of your takes on the pal designs; It doesn't HAVE to be a carbon copy to be a rip-off. I'm a character designer, and i know a little about creature design. You can tell what they were attempting to replicate in almost every design. Calling it a "reach" because they don't look exactly the same is missing the point of the design quite a bit. Some of these are so blatant its a bit embarrassing.

People who aggressively defend Palworld are just as annoying as rabid pokemon loyalists; probably because the groups overlap somewhat. i'm keeping my distance lol

A lot of the issues arent just designs stolen from the Pokemon IP but rather from fancreations/fakemon made by fans and posted on art sites and there are some pretty apparent rips from popular fan designs Ive seen. Thats mostly the issue Ive seen going around

You said about one pal something like "this just looks like some deviantart's edgy eeveelution design" which made me go 😬😬😬 My prediction for the future? It's gonna turn out that they stole fakemon designs from the internet... Allegedly.

To me the pals are basically pokemons drawn by someone who vaguely remembers their designs

My biggest gripe is that all of these fans of Palworld just seem to use it as some proof for Pokémon being crap. Well, while Pokemon's definitely faced some issues in recent times (they rushed the hell out of scarlet and violet), I wouldn't really say that makes plagiarism OK nor does it set a good precedent for future games that could compete with Pokémon. If something's gonna compete with Pokémon I at least want it to have soul and not be clearly lazy slop that has things like guns just for shock value. Palworld is just uninspired and trying too hard to be edgy

Surprised you didn't mention in the lovander section that its description straight up implies all it does is SA others which yeah i know this is an edgy game but... that's a new low

The way i see it. With how sue happy nintendo is over anything that they consider a pokemon ripoff, and will absolutely go after any and all fan games. With how long Palworld has been in development, and openly so. With how the game is still being sold without any actions taken, other than the pokemon company taking down a fan mod that put pokemon in it, I cant see anything happening with the game. And i'm not going to pretend that i know anything about copywrite law, and much less with the Japanese copywrite law, as that is what it would come down to, with both companies being based in Japan. I'm just going to wait for the lawyers to decide.

The fact when you criticize this game people call you a pokemon bootlicker 🙃 nah, being indie is not a free pass to ignore the game's plagiarism and flaws. I feel like mixing several games together isn't what makes for a good game.

Dunno if anyone else has pointed this out, but Lunaris really obviously rips Meowstic Male's color scheme, it's just inverted. It even has twin tails, a pair of spiky ear/horn things, and a focus on ringed stripes around those tails/ears as a major motif.

I think Lamball and Wooloo are simply both based on the Valais blacknose sheep. Which tracks, because blacknose sheep are one of the cutest things humans have done with their domestication powers.

28:14 There are so so so many Pokémon, literally hundreds, so there's no expectation for one person to possibly remember every single Pokémon...but every single one you've "given a pass" has a Pokémon I can compare it's design or it's body parts to. 😂😂

Quite frankly I don’t understand why the game continued the Pokémon style into their game, even these very derivative designs would at least look unique if they had been done in a different style. Like if you’ve ever seen the Pokemon in a realistic style art something like that would have elevated these designs and felt more suited to the realistic Unreal Engine environments. This could have been really cool and unique without feeling like a cash grab,so sad.

I let my gf use my gamepass ultimate and I said I’d let her little brother use it, all he does with it is play palworld like all day, and he cries when I say he can’t use my account 💀 my gf and I are like “THIS is what ur playing all day????”

I think Palworld relies too much on the shock value and "Woah Pokemon but DARK and GRITTY and with GUNS and SEX LIZARDS and DEATH" and that is going to get old fast. It had an immense boom in players because of that exact shock value but when it wears off (and it's already wearing off) nobody will be talking about it anymore. It's the same as what happened with fall guys and among us, except I haven't even seen any videos of serious palworld playthroughs getting pushed. I think i watched one palworld video, and the letsplayer was just talking about the "Woah Pokemon With Guns!!!!" gimmick the entire time anyway so I stopped paying attention halfway through. It's the kind of game (and the kind of internet drama) that's fated to die out quickly. Palworld will not last the year (it might not even last until summer.)

This video has a pretty high dislike ratio for something that came out barely 30 minutes ago, it's like people just read the title and immediately disliked lol.

maybe this doesn't need to be said but as i saw more and more of the designs i really started to grasp how many of them are like... as some other people have been putting it, elements of many pokemon being hastily stapled together into a product that feels like it only exists as a cashgrab. even if the comparisons aren't one to one. and while i agree that pokemon doesn't own the depiction of any element-styled animal, the way they're all portrayed is so similar to pokemon that it really all just feels like theft no matter what. sure, pokemon doesnt own an electric horse, but the way that design was created was obviously done with zebstrika in mind, you know? pokemon doesn't own a grass/tree monkey, but the way it's designed was also obviously done to evoke the image of pansage. it feels (at least to me) like they hardly considered originality with so many of the designs and just picked out elements to kind of change a little bit. other people have also mentioned this too, but it feels like when you rephrase a quote by slightly switching around the wording and passing it off as your own idea. it doesn't make it free from criticism and any less of the theft that it is. that is just my opinion though, sorry if i come off as rude i really don't intend it that way. i am the last person to go up to bat for big companies, but plagiarism is plagiarism.

I am not really concerned if this game is hurting a big corp, but I don't like that people are supporting this creator who has been doing dubious things and that this game would set the precedent in what game developers are allowed to do in making games. I also feel like this game will destroy any discussion of any future Pokemon like games because people will either ignore plagiarism or think it's a copy when it's literally almost nothing like pokemon.

I hate how some people are like "pokemon deserves it" as if most of the games after the 3ds ones being a bit lackluster means plagiarism is suddenly okay. Have they never heard that two wrongs don't make a right?

It just feels like anyone with even a tiny bit of creativity could have at least changed some of the colors up to make these pal designs more unique. Any good designs are overshadowed by the fact that it looks like someone was rushed into creating 100 pals with no creative standards, versus taking their time to put more quality in the designs.

i think people want to defend this games just cause they hate Nintendo

I will say, color palette wise- blue yellow and white are kind of just extremely common pallets for anything that is water based. Most of the color pallete things I don't really see an issue with, however, I will say, Bushi- kinda looks a lot like specifically two yokai from yokai watch, Gleam and Chansin.

One hour? Damn! I see "very long essay about plagiarism" is a new youtube niche and i am glad

As you were going through all the Pals, I caught a whole bunch more possible instances of lifted designs/elements I wanted to point at: Fuack: its body shape & markings, the puffy collar, and the big flat tail are dead ringers for Oshawott Vixy: I would personally argue that this one is also Eevee adjacent from the neck down Woolipop: while I agree that pokemon doesn't own "cute pink candy creature", it's hard to deny that the swirly blobby bangles on the sides of the head and the red swirls aren't strikingly reminiscent of Alcremie. the whole body shape is also extremely Mareep in nature, down to the conical face and the swirl atop the head Melpaca: its weird gangly legs are very similar to Virizion's/Iron Leaves' legs Arsox: this one is probably the most upsetting imo - take a look at the fan created Pokemon Flairees; it's so blatantly similar that it hurts. lifting designs from Pokemon is one thing, but lifting designs from fan artists is so much worse Digtoise: not a Pokemon but the shell is so extremely just Dry Bowser's shell that it's kinda funny Cryolinx: possibly a stretch, but the upper half really strikes me as taking body shape cues from Drapion Broncherry: i would also say this one takes heavily from Meganium, especially with the color scheme Reptyro: very Heatran adjacent in general body shape/stance Frostallion: in addition to Suicune, I'd point out that its vibes borrow heavily from Glastrier and Spectrier - especially considering it has an alt typing that uses black and dark purple for its colors, like Spectrier Many of these are incidental and line up with what you've already pointed out about them borrowing from all sorts of places, but I do in particular feel the need to call attention again to Arsox and Flairees - with the uncanny similarities of these two, I can't help but wonder if some of the other unique designs are also taken or borrowed from other fan projects that the Pocket Pair artists dug up in google searches (for example, searching "fire goat pokemon" leads you right to the Flairees evolution line). All of this aside, personally when it comes to Pokemon type games, I think it's extremely possible to make one that doesn't take so heavily from Pokemon for the designs. Cassette Beasts (even though I didn't personally enjoy it) and the upcoming Beastieball are proof enough that you can definitely make Pokemon-alike games while creating unique designs and forging unique identities. Palworld, on the other hand, really does feel like its design identity is so heavily leaning on Pokemon - even for the designs that aren't just blatantly lifted from Pokemon or other places. I think that's ultimately why it has gotten so much controversy and discourse.

I don't like Palworld at all. Some of the designs are blatant rip offs of existing Pokemon. Also, no, Pokemon has not been trash in the last few years. It holds a very special place in my heart and honestly nothing will ever replace it.

I would have loved Palworld if they had chosen a style and stuck with it. Either go super cartoony like Pokemon or hit the Monster Hunter crowd by designing more realistic versions of these creatures. The fact that they did neither is what rings the "this is all stolen shit, and likely AI generated" bells for me. I know a little about the engine they're using, and it isn't out of the question to use either style. "Realism" isn't baked into it, it's more about the models, surfacing, textures and lighting you're using that'll give you that effect. If they were creating all their models from scratch, going for a cutesy style would actually be easier on the modelling/texturing side of things. But we all know that the environments are storebought, as well as most non-Pal assets. I also feel that the sob story about the artist they used is to cover their asses. Hiring a desperate artist right out of university and telling them to copy models by hand isn't saving them, it's exploiting them, and now that the copy work has been found, that artist is going to have a hard time getting work in any other company. That company essentially has a chain around their neck, now, because they were either too desperate for work or too inexperienced to know they should say no when a boss tells you to commit plagiarism. Or, they were too spineless to do so, that is a possibility, as well. They don't deserve harassment, but don't strip an artist of their agency. We can say no and walk away. I've done it before, even when I was in no real situation to. It really sucks, because this game seems sick as hell, and if they had done their own thing, developed their own style, I would have been all over it like syrup on a pancake. I don't want "New game that wishes it was Pokemon" I want "New monster raising series doing cool things that Pokemon never will".

As an outsider to both of these properties I think this is an interesting case. While the 1:1 similarities might be hard to pin down, what's really being copied is the art style. I know almost nothing about pokemon but if you showed me any of those pals, I would think that's what they were. The problem is that art styles aren't copyrightable and probably shouldn't be, because it would open the door to a LOT of harmful and unnecessary lawsuits that would hinder artists more than help them. I'm sure nintendo will probably sue but I hope this doesn't become a landmark case that allows art styles themselves to be trademarked.

The thing I've said since day one, is that you shouldn't feel confident a design of palworld is 100% unique while others are clearly plagiarized, because creating something unique would require an entirely different work flow than the clearly plagiarized ones and I'm not confident these creators would do that if they're already so comfortable copying everything in the first place. An original creation you draft and concept first, a copied creation begins with the tracing of features. And who is to say they wouldn't steal from fakemon? Other games? SIKE take a look at the comments and you'll see THEY HAVE! I have no confidence a single appealing design is truly original, because no self respecting artist who'd be able to make anything unique would sink low enough to also create my neighbor totoro 2.

@Izzzyzzz You missed some stuff but here you go. Lamballs wool geometry is literally just wooloos wool mirrored. The Chicken is a recolored Rowlet (Even has 2 toes.) Lifmunk is a Final Fantasy Carbuncle made from pachirisu. Foxparks is Nicket Fuack is a Pancham with a beak. Flope is Tinkaton. Daedream is Whimsocott. Robinquill is a gallade mixed with a decidueye. Pyrin is Kirin from Yokai watch. Surfent has typhlosions face. Digtoises shell is literally a koopa shell. Bushi is Gleam from Yokai watch. Also, byofrog seems like a psyop due to their pinned tweet.

Can I mention that white haired, blidnfolded boss, wearing black coat with high collar is like budget Gojo from JJK? 😭

How is Bristla not just spiky angry version of Lilligant fr? Honestly I think you're being VERY generous with the whole list. Plagiarism covers WAY more than just 1-1 copy of something and there's less than handful on the whole list that wouldn't go under it. It's like when people "give credit" without actually asking for permission and hiding the credit somewhere on a vague pastebin list on description.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about this game is that it is just so soulless. The design ethos of this game is derivative in nature. Even the name of the game just oozes the vibe of a derivative slop game, especially in tandem with what the game delivers. It can’t be a good game with well thought out mechanics, graphics, design, art, characters, and stories that have a cohesive feel. That is too much work. Instead it makes me feel the way AI art makes me feel. It’s devoid of any care for the joy of creating something you can be proud of. I don’t think everything in the game was made with AI art, but it feels like what happens when deeply incurious, untalented, greedy people try to treat the creative process like AI art in an attempt to produce something that will result in the most money for the least amount of effort. Pick the things from different franchises that you think made that franchise successful and slap them all together and then try and sell it to people. Obviously not everyone that is employed through this studio is approaching it that way, but I think the people in charge of the direction and final decisions of the game are.

its fascinating to watch how quickly people will turn on genuine creatives for the sake of cynical, low effort slop that someone rightly pointed out feels like a redditor's idea of a good game. no story, no worldbuilding, no intentionality behind creature designs (so many of them look so slapped together and mismatched that if they're not ai generated, its just reeks of a 'hey can i copy your homework i'll change it up' design ethos), and the pals look completely out of place in the 3d environment they're dumped in- probably bc the team is reusing old assets to save money. it's ai art bro rhetoric to say 'its not that deep/who cares i like it, a real 'the curtains are just blue' response that demonstrates no understanding of the fact that the things you like about palworld are the things the team stole from real creatives, without which palworld would not exist

The biggest issue imo is just how forced it all is. It’s Pokémon styled but edgier and with survival crafting mechanics to appeal to the crowds that like that kind of stuff, all of its Pal designs are made to appeal to someone like the edgy ones are for the people who seek out the cool lookin stuff, the cute designs for the people who seek out the cute stuff etc. And Loveander is for the degenerates and furries out there like there’s none of the feeling of legitimate screw ups that Pokémon had with the randomly offcolor Pokémon descriptions or weirdly adult designs. It’s all so forced and fake feeling.

what i hate the most about all this drama is that people think you are attacking the game itself. Of course you can enjoy Palworld! But there is a big lap between enjoying something, and defending everything about it only because you liked it. Plagiarism is never okay, and we need to bring that up. You can enjoy Palworld AND point out at the clear plagiarism it does, just like Izzzyzzz in this video!

every time someone in this comment section says some shit like “why are you defending the giant corporation they havent put out a good pokemon game since [time i stopped being 13] youre just a salty nintendo fan mad because its better” im reminded of that hbomberguy quote about how people dont care about plagiarism if youre stealing from someone they dont like. funny how creative theft is bad until it isnt

like the biggest thing I've seen is people wanted pokemon, but for adults. but shin megami tensei series is literally that it's a monster catching game with usually adult themes and designs I don't know why they want pokemon to be something it isn't sure the old pokemon manga had dark themes, but pokemon hasn't been that way for a long time now also I've seen "this will finally get gamefreak and pokemon company to finally make a better game!" when they actually don't have to worry cuz they're like a multi bajillion dollar franchise with nostalgia power and tons of different media that isn't just games. I feel like palworld is just a passing fad like temtems. doesn't help that people cannot call them pals at all it seems, cuz I keep seeing people call them pokemon. like it doesn't even have it's own identity to the people that seemingly enjoy the game. even craftopia, their other game, looks like a breath of the wild ripoff. like all it seems they know how to do is copy bigger more successful games instead of just being their own thing.

the only good future is Palworld changing those ripped-off mon designs. Nobody wants the game taken down, and the long-term damage from letting those slide always favors corporations

I'm not surprised that at least one of the creators is really into AI-generated "art". That's exactly what this game feels like to me: A remix of other people's work, not to expand on their ideas, but because it's easier than coming up with something original - and also because those established works have already proven to be huge commercial successes. It's soulless and cynical. Little more than a slightly elevated version of shovelware.

Grizzbolt looks like electric Totoro... I can't believe they gave Totoro a machine gun

I hate that now on any pro or even neutral towards pokemon tiktok or post I see there's people in the comments like "you don't have to deal with this in palworld! palworld is better! all pokemon games ever have always sucked but this one is good!" Like I don't play pokemon games because I'm interested in beating cute fictional animals with a stick, I feel guilty just throwing mud at them in Legends Arceus. You can like palworld, that's fine and dandy, but to act like it's a one to one replacement for pokemon or that it's soooooooooo much better in every way is not true. I don't think recent pokemon games have been perfect but I like them. I have no interest in replacing them with a game where you have to physically attack the cute creatures I want to be friends with.

Y'all really need to learn the difference between something being illegal and being immoral. Sure- Nintendo cannot sue Palworld. Nintendo shouldn't sue Palworld. But a supposed indie company with 4 unfinished/underdeveloped games (Clones of Slay the Spire?, BOTW, and Pokémon, and one for Hollow Knight in development, plus the stupid AI one) is probably going to continue pushing out legally distinct but still very suspicious games while abandoning anything that doesn't sell until they get called on it. Sure, they don't appear to be making total abandonware- but I'm going to bet a lot of their catalogue is going to remain unfinished once the trend dies down and they're no longer making tons of money.

I too am a middle-ground Andy. I appreciate the more unique designs that Palworld have and moving forward I hope they embrace it rather than lean into plagiarist/parody. Cawgnito is my absolute favourite and aside from design, I don't think I've noticed anyone else point out how comically unique their animations are. The way they walk, run and teleport is just a delight, it makes me happy to have them out with me at all times.

Palworld is a redditors idea of a perfect videogame

I think the biggest problems this whole thing shows is how many people are HAPPY TO HURT ARTISTS if they can get away with it by spewing some vague 'capitalism company bad' bullshit.

I'll be honest here, while I can agree with some of your takes on the designs a lot of the rankings seemed biased and all over the place. I don't want to suck the dick of palworld because even if Byofrog did mess and rig some of these models I do see how some of these models look extremely plagiarized and just weird imo. The game from my perspective is extremely uncanny, not just in it's designs or tonal shift but just like,, in general. Like it feels like a game made by AI if that makes sense. I will say though this video isn't exactly the best either, it just seemed all over the place and poorly researched. Love your stuff but this isn't exactly the greatest take Ive seen from you.

controversial opinion: i won't play games that look ugly/not my style. I know, don't judge a game by its cover and all, but like I don't like the vibes. idc if it plays well, I value the atmosphere just as much as gameplay. if I am going to invest time to play a game for x amount of hours I want to look at something I like. "it's fun if you play with friends/multiplayer"... that's exactly what I don't play. to me, the allure of a pokemon game was its "cozy" solo content and cute charas. this game happens to attract the type of players I specifically avoid too (edgy 'family guy' humor). all in all, never followed the hype regardless of its plagiarism controversies.

My problem with pal world is that it is entirely made for profit, and there’s no real inspiration behind it. I know companies nowadays care about profit only, but the reason I’d rather play ARK or just go back to Pokémon is that for the former, it has already been made, I don’t need a copy paste game, and for the latter, the world is so much more interesting with its intricate lore and story. Video games are a form of art, and I’d rather play a piece of art than a piece made for easy consumption and money grabbing.

Okay so another thing i really have to point out, Is that so many people apparently love Palworld because they're just so sick of pokemon and complain that modern pokemon is uninspired, lazy, and cash grabby. But then they turn around and support this obvious lazy cash grab of a game??? Like I'd get it if it was a cool original game that felt suspiciously similar to pokemon. But its feeling like so many people are praising it just because they want to stick it to Nintendo.

Pocketpair has never finished a game, and have many unreleased games that are clearly shovelware copies of other games. PalWorld isn't even the most egregious.

Okay, if ONE artist was hired on for 100+ designs I'm not throwing her under the bus because that's TOUGH to pull off and we have no idea if her bosses were going to her and saying "we want a mashup of these pokemon" or "we want a pal just like Lucario because it's popular." So don't come for me, blame the CEO. That said, I'm going to be that kind of petty: 30 Bristla looks like Poison Ivy as a pokemon 32 Hangyu - WHAT??? Pokemon has some dark backstories but that's so overt it's tasteless 45 Leezpunk is derivative of Toxel/Toxtricity with the purple/yellow and the "punk lizard" aesthetic, it's as if they created an evolution between the baby and adult versions 48B Robinquill Terra is similar to Decidueye's Hisuian color palette 51 Elizabee is a Vespaqueen derivative, although that gets into "how many ways can you draw a wolf" 67 Digtoise looks like a Dreadnaw/Druddigon/Cubone mashup to me 70 Flambelle is adorable but she's giving me Litwick, again a "draw a wolf" one 75 Katress borrowed Misdrevus's hat! You could also point to Meowscarada but it's two different magic cats in a dress 81 Kelpsea I'm sorry but she gives me a Gen 1 mashup of Horsea, Dratini, Lapras, and Seel 82 Azurobe while a VERY overt copy imo I saw people saying that the model comparison was untrue, that the twitter user fudged the data? Can anyone confirm/deny? 87 Petallia could stand next to Lilligant, Tsareena, and Bellossom and not get clocked but she's also giving Lillymon from Digimon imo 91 Wumpo is also giving Snover 94 Felbat has some Absol inspiration in the hair with the "horn" placement 100 Anubis whew that's a YIKES. The skin tone needs to get changed stat imo 102 Suzaku has some Yveltal in the DNA 108/109 Paladius/Necromus also borrow the "centaur" appearances of Palkia/Dialga Origin Forms

Yeah all of this kinda hit the nail on the head for me. This is exactly how i felt for a while, but me being a huge Pokemon fan a lot of my friends thought I was just upset with Palworld's success, when mostly the tonal dissonance was the real reason i wasn't interested in the game. Palworld to me felt like a family guy-esque parody of Pokemon and I was just never into it. Also, thanks for showcasing all of the Pal designs, I saw some ones in there I really liked. I hope the artist designing the Pals can continue their work under less than savory conditions.

I don’t think anyone was ever denying that it was a rip off. In fact, many of the people who like it, unironically like the fact that they can basically have they favorites from the Pokémon games as a Pal in Palworld. 7 or so years ago, this kind of obvious copycating would never fly. Now though, people are really getting kind of sick with Nintendo and Pokémon’s stagnanation, lack of effort and genuine inability to innovate. We’ve had the same format since day 1 and It feels refreshing to have a new perspective that Nintendo can’t touch with a lawsuit, takedown or cease and desist. We all see that Palworld’s creatures are not very original… like at all, but sometimes a kick in behind from some decent competition is what a company needs to pull their heads out of there and get their stuff figured out. It’s not like Nintendo is the only one getting alittle too comfy with a niche in the market right about now either. A few companies might be in for some rude awakenings here soon…

14:19 u can be based on the same animals and still make it distinct There are lots of fakemon based on cats and dogs that look nothing like meowth or maschiff