Palworld embroiled in AI and Pokémon ‘plagiarism’ controversy

Steam’s newest hit survival game, Palworld, has been accused of plagiarising designs from Pokémon, as social media users negatively highlight its creator’s historical association with generative AI tools.

Palworld by Japanese studio Pocketpair released into early access on PC and Xbox on Friday, and immediately became a breakout success, with its creator claiming 2 million sales in 24 hours.

The huge launch exposure inevitably reignited discourse that has followed Palworld since its announcement, around its character designs’ apparent similarities to Pokémon.

Although the gameplay of Palworld is closer to survival games like Ark and Rust than Game Freak’s series, many social media users have noted the obvious influences its character designs have taken from the Nintendo series.

Following Palworld’s release on Friday, some X users collated perceived similarities between Palworld’s ‘Pals’ and Pokémon.

“It’s not even subtle about its rip offs, how much else has it stolen?” wrote one user. Another added: “I want to like Palworld, but I don’t know if I can support running existing Pokemon through a fusor and passing them off as ‘new’ IP”.

The situation is further muddled in the eyes of some by Pocketpair’s historical relationship with generative AI tools. Artist Zaytri noted on X that one of its previous titles was ‘AI: Art Imposter’, a game which literally utilises an AI image generator as its core mechanic.

The user also highlighted multiple historical X posts by Pocketpair’s CEO Takuro Mizobe, in which he appeared to praise the potential of AI image generators for content creation.

The use of generative AI is a significant pressure point in many creative industries, including video games, with tools such as Midjourney being criticised by some who perceive them as replacing professional artists and using their work without permission for their training set.

Earlier this month, an ongoing lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI, and DeviantArt listed thousands of artist