Nintendo always wanted to arm their Pokemon, just were too scared to do it.
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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That Azurobe model really gets me. If you look at Serperior, it has that collar that's effectively a second layer of the body, so the body above/"inside" it is thinner than the body below it. If you remove the collar, there'd be a discontinuity between the two sections. And wouldn't you know it, Azurobe has a shitty-looking ribbon slapped on the neck right about where that discontinuity would be. If they had used the Serperior model as a guide for proportions but made the model itself from scratch, there'd be no need for that ribbon to be exactly where it just so happens to be.
I'd really love to get my hands on these models and check out a few things.
Some of them seem pretty bad. I feel like the example image with the eyes and the teeth is quite a damning stylistic choice, compared to some of their other monsters which look more like a palette swap and animal change with some model variations. Save for the few that straight up have the same attack, like the Deciduueye example, I think it's reasonable enough to use them for inspiration, although not necessarily the best option. It's a shame they felt the need to rely on something that is popular I think it hurt them a bit by not having as uniform a vision.
That said, even if I do think it's pretty obvious I don't want them to lose this if anything comes of it, Pokemon is just as bad and they have nothing to gain from ruining this persons work other than asserting dominance.
I do hope they use this as a learning opportunity for next time and maybe stop being so goddamn blatant in their "homage". I would have been much more inclined to the game if it felt like the monsters had some rationale behind them because the game is pretty solid overall. All I can say is that I hope the game continues to exist but maybe gets a more original in-world bestiary and not Pokemon Gen 15
Calling this one image damning feels like corporatized media has become so dominant, people don't really get anymore how similar things need to be for it to be an actual legal issue.
Superhero comics have a lot of characters that are obvious ripoffs of characters from other publishers and yet they are still legally distinct enough that they can get away with it. Comes to mind also how Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse to replace Oswald the Lucky Rabbit which, even though he also created, was owned by Universal. Both were rubber hose-styled. black-bodied, white-faced, big-eared animal characters wearing shorts, and yet that was also legally distinct enough for his ownership of the character to be established.
It would take far more than a similar face for Palworld to be liable of anything. Sure, it's enough for people to tell they have tried to imitate it, but by itself that's not grounds for legal action.
There are some claims of copying or tracing meshes going around on social media that could be an actual issue, but the validity of those is still questionable. The Pokémon Company needs to either point out a near identical design, and I do emphasize, near identical, or to prove that stolen assets were used in the game's creation.
I'd argue against the example image being damning in the first place because it's fairly obvious they're both derived from the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, which is well passed the point of being public domain
Not only that but they have entirely different body shapes and color schemes. I doubt a face by itself could be copyrighted. If that was the case a lot of anime would have issues.
The thing is they literally took pokemon 3D assets, edited them a little and that's all
Because pals look like this
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TOedaV033DY/maxresdefault.jpg
but now IN 3D!!!
Pals
https://imgur.com/PbtJxRr
They took Serperior head+ Milotic body and Primarina hair
https://nintenduo.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Palworld-Plagio-Pokemon-03-1024x576.webp
self-explanatory
For the thumbnail image, they took meoth face, purugly body and that's it
These designs are not "inspired" they simply imported the assets from a pokemon game on blender or something, used "copy and paste" for different body parts and that's it, job done that's their completely original creature, totally not copied
The person in social media who extracted and compared assets admitted they modified them to appear more similar because they didn't like how the game promotes animal cruelty.
One thing that a lot of people don't seem to realize in this whole discussion is that, whatever you may think of it as far as artistic integrity goes, Pokémon only owns the full complete design of their characters and the actual game files, but not every possible independently produced variation or recombination of those traits. They own Wooloo but they don't own every possible roundish sheep-like creature.
To be fair it's obvious that Palworld's company Pocket Pair doesn't care about originality. But whether the are literally infringing on the Pokémon property is unclear, and a lot of people are making serious but baseless accusations out of snowballing social media outrage.
If there's any actual, real issue that warrants a lawsuit, you can be sure that the Pokémon Company's lawyers will find it out. It's not like they need anyone to defend them, we are literally talking about the biggest media brand in the world.
So does Rockstar, Valve and Microsoft investigate for any unlicensed commercial usage of the Intellectual Property they own and copyright violations by others. Some are less aggressive, that's for true. If it's not, then Pokemon Company or Nintendo simply don't care.
Edit: Did the reply I was replying to disappeared? I am sure I was replying to someone who said Nintendo would go to investigate the game for any IP infringement.
There are over 1000 Pokemon at this point. There's bound to be some level of similarity here and there. Gamefreak even designed Pokemon after other creatures, so it just seems somewhat silly to point a finger.
Palworld could totally get away with it unless it turns out they're using ripped models. That would be monumentally stupid