If the accusations of Palworld peeking at Pokémon’s homework for its catchable monster designs weren’t already rife enough, a modder has decided to take the Garth Marenghi approach and remove any possible question by turning Palworld’s Pokémon-a-likes into just straight-up Pokémon.
Pocketpair's monster-collecting survival game Palworld has rekindled the eternal debate over what exactly constitutes a breach of copyright. While the game's mechanics are more reminiscent of Ark: Survival Evolved and other tree-punching, template-arranging wilderness sims, its monsters owe obvious debts to Nintendo and Game Freaks' Pokémon games.
The developers have something of a track record on this front, with their older early access release Craftopia freely stirring in nods to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But what separates copyright infringement from a flagrant, but perfectly legal rip-off? Given that a lot of people are making the case for Palworld being copyright theft online, I thought it might be useful to seek insight from (ominous roll of thunder) an actual lawyer.
I'm still working my way through the grim realities of Steam mega-hit Palworld, but as developers Pocketpair begin working through their 50,000-strong pile of bug reports, I'd hazard to add one more to the pile: please, something must be done about this game's ruthless police force, who are so dogged in their pursuit of evildoers that they literally will not stop chasing you until you've been shot dead.
It's not even been a week, and yet Palworld is already getting a Pokemon mod, as if the game didn't resemble the series enough as it is.
You know it, I know it, we all know it, Palworld looks a lot like Pokemon in places, from the designs that have courted some plagiarism accusations, to the very act of having to throw balls at them to capture them. That's mostly where the similarities end, given that it's more of a survival game, but content creator and modder ToastedShoes is seeing to it that Palworld becomes even more like Pokemon. The YouTuber teased an upcoming video of his showing off the mod in question, which you can take a look at for yourself below.
Very quickly you'll see the one and only Ash Ketchum in place of your player character, with his classic red and white cap, and his not so classic bow and arrow he uses to fight with. It looks like a massive undertaking of a mod, as not only is Ash there instead of your own character, but all of the Pals have been replaced with Pokemon like Pikachu, Torterra, Sawsbuck and more. Plus, certain characters have been turned into Ash's companions like Brock and Misty, and the first boss fight is one of his age old nemesis' Jessie from Team Rocket. It's a pretty comprehensive looking mod, and is pretty impressive considering the game came out last Friday.