Honestly, I didn’t want to comment on the controversy surrounding Palworld.

The game has been out for a couple weeks now, and in my half a dozen or so hours playing it, I think it’s… fine? It’s a bit of a bog standard base-building survival game, with the Pals being the hook that makes it unique. I’m a big fan of monster-catching games, so it had my attention pre-launch.

In the end, though, I just couldn’t fall in love with this game. I’m certainly not as sinking as much time into the title as others seem to be, at least; our very own Ben Hazell had a much more positive Palworld review written up for the site. I just think a quick overview of my opinions on this game and the monster catcher RPG genre is kind of important before we sink into the shit moat.

Are the Pals essentially Pokemon rip-offs? Yeah, totally. I thought we all knew that when the first trailer came out ages ago! I’m of the belief that these designs are legally distinct, but some of these guys really are ridiculously similar to the Pokemon they’re cribbing from. I mean, have you seen Cremis? That’s a fuckin’ Eevee, dude.

So yes, I saw Palworld as a morally dubious but ultimately harmless product. The gameplay is completely different from mainline Pokemon games. This wasn’t hurting Nintendo, no problem. If the designs were truly plagiarized, I’d have assumed Palworld would’ve been struck down by a cease and desist long before its release. Basically, they’re scummy but legal. Whatever.

The reason I feel like I need to open my big mouth, though, is because Palworld’s release caused seemingly everyone else to lose their minds.

There have been quite a few conspiracy theories running rampant about the development of Palworld, and I have seen little to no evidence substantiating any of them. All the same, it seems as though some of these conspiracy theories have been nearly universally accepted as “true” just because they were shared quickly and parroted loudly.

The more believable of these accusations is that Palworld straight-up ripped assets from Pokemon games. There are Pals that look like Lycanroc and Eevee, for instance, and many Pals with more distinctive designs seem to have features ripped from other Pokemon, too. 

The only real proof I’ve seen of this, however, came from a Twitter user in hot water for their explicit bias against the game. Byofrog, the user who made the initial claim that Palworld used exact models from Pokemon, later admitted they used language that gave a potentially incorrect impression of the situation. “I feel a little regretful for using “exactly” so flippantly here,” the user wrote. “I was trying to be silly but I think it gave an incorrect impression. I want to emphasize that while some elements are similar these meshes are not literally “exact” copies of each other.”

Byofrog’s pinned tweet also reveals a bias that could potentially motivate them to be making these tweets about Palworld. “I am doing this because I think it’s disgusting how much Palworld glorifies animal abuse,” they wrote.

It’s possible that this claim is still true — I’ve seen some evidence about very similar polygon counts and model topology that I won’t claim to know enough about to form an opinion just yet. At the same time, I find it highly suspicious that the originator of these claims is such an untrustworthy source.

The second (more serious) accusation levied against Palworld is that the Pal models were created using AI. This accusation states that since Pocket Pair’s CEO has openly voiced his support for using AI in games, and the company has done so for one title in the past, we know AI was used in Palworld.

Don’t get me wrong; this is shitty. It’s a whole steaming, bubbling pile of shit, actually. I hate the idea that AI is going to start turning creative endeavors into a slurry of the most generic-looking crap ever! Even still, I haven’t seen a shred of evidence that Pocket Pair has used AI to create any of Palworld’s assets. 

Until we have some evidence, how can we, in good conscience, levy this accusation? A team of artists is being harassed over using AI for assets, and we don’t even know if AI was involved in the creation of this game at all!

I’m just hoping the controversy blows over soon, and people can just accept that the game was built with a lil legal knavery and have that be the end of it. I hope people can be normal about this game! Above all else, I hope it doesn’t become a trend for people to throw out accusations about a game being built with AI when there’s zero evidence that’s the case. 

If evidence came out proving that this game was built with AI or that assets were ripped straight from Pokemon games, I would be among the first to condemn Palworld! But until we have that evidence, we can’t be forming a mob like this. It sets a horrible precedent for sending even more harassment to game devs, who never deserve this shit, and already put up with way too much of it.

Everyone sucks here. Except for me, because my opinion is right. And by the way, if you’re one of the people who’ve sent harassment to the people involved in this — whether it be the people making sure Palworld’s art was made by a human art team or the people who are actually employed by Pocket Pair — go fuck yourself. 

What do you think about the Palworld controversy? Am I the crazy one after all? Let me know down below!