Palworld Devs Are Being Accused of Plagiarism and Using AI Art

Abdul Saad

Palworld has seen a fair bit of success lately with the game topping Steam charts and selling millions of copies in its first day of early access release. However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for the title as it’s now being accused of plagiarism and the use of AI art by several social media users online as spotted by VGC. While Palworld has its fair share of distinct and notable differences from the Pokemon series, net denizens have pointed out the game’s similarities to the series specifically between its Pals and Pokemon. Some have also pointed out Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe’s history with AI, and his praise for the technology, and due to this, several have also claimed that Palworld uses AI technology to generate its pals but these claims have yet to be proven in any way. It’s also worth mentioning that CEO Mizobe recently claimed that Palworld’s 100 character concepts were mostly created by a single graduate student. However, despite all these claims Palworld is still currently a huge success with numbers steadily rising. Palworld launched on January 19 and is available now for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store. It is also available on Xbox Game Pass.

Reminder not to support palworld, it's not even subtle about its rip offs, how much else has it stolen? pic.twitter.com/amoWemNcpC

— AutumnRaptor (@AutumnRaptor1) January 17, 2024

here's the CEO of Pocketpair talking about using AI to bypass copyright, generating fakemons with it, calling AI: Art Imposter a real-time image generation game, and being excited for games powered by GPT-4 pic.twitter.com/79xwZr0yEI

— Zaytri 🍉 FREE PALESTINE (@imZaytri) January 19, 2024

since I'm bored as hell, I'm gonna be making a thread of this i think… Palworld design analysis trying to spot every pokemon they jumbled together pic.twitter.com/Ch9jcx5hCI

— onion_mu (@onion_mu) January 18, 2024

The game’s details via the developer:

Palworld is a game about living a slow life with mysterious creatures “Pal” or throwing yourself into life-and-death battles with poachers.

You can make Pals fight, breed, help with farming, or work in factories. You can also sell them off or even slaughter them to eat! That however, is forbidden by law.

Key Features

Survival – This world is full of dangers such as food shortages, harsh weather, and illegal poachers. You must be prepared to do anything if you want to survive. You may even need to consume Pals sometimes…
Riding and exploration – Fly, swim, dig holes… you can explore all kinds of places on lands, the sea, and in the sky by riding Pals.
Building – Do you want to build a pyramid? You can have a large number of Pals work on the construction. Don’t worry; labor laws won’t be applied to Pals.
Life – Make your life more comfortable by collecting a variety of valuable Pals to light fires, generate power, and mine minerals.
Farming – Different Pals are good at different things such as sowing, watering, harvesting, or else. Create attractive farms and orchards with your Pals. There are also Pals that can duplicate themselves when they’re planted.
Factory and Automation – It is essential for automation to let Pals do the manual work. Build a factory and place Pals in it. They will work forever as long as they’re fed until the end of their lifetime.
Dungeon Exploration – With Pals, you’ll be safe in dangerous areas. If you are in danger, you use Pals to cover your escape! They’ll give their lives to protect you.
Breeding and Heredity – When you breed Pals, they inherit the parents’ characteristics. Mix rare species Pals to raise the strongest Pals!
Poaching and Crime – Endangered species Pals live in the hunting prohibited area. If you sneak in and catch them, you’ll get tons of money! It’s only illegal if you get caught.
Multiplayer – This game supports multiplayer. Invite your friends to go on an adventure together. Of course, you can battle and trade with other players!