I don’t know how many of you have been using Steam for over a decade, but once you’re on the platform for long enough, you begin to see the same things over and over again. One such thing, and something that I’d argue Palworld embodies, is a title that relies on hype to roll over into a community of short-term players before vanishing altogether.
Palworld is a game that appears to be “borrowing” quite a lot. In some cases, this debt is acceptable, as is the case with its similarities to Ark: Survival Evolved, for example. Ark is a game that satisfies a very devout (albeit niche) community, and so it naturally follows that some games would try to expand on that.
In the case of the artwork, though, there’s something off about the almost exact nature the creatures in the game share with Pokemon. I’m not sure I need to expand on this point for more than 1% of you, but just in case, I’ll spell it out: AI Generation and the theft of likeness.
So there’s two points there. First: I would put a fair bit of money on the game being designed, at least in part, by AI. Just look at the “pals” throughout the game. I see Smash Bros characters and Pokemon everywhere, and so do you. No, you don’t need AI to use assets like that, but yes, I do think the developers over at Pocketpair definitely used it to create like-imagery of already existing content.
The second point: Theft of likeness. AKA, copyright infringement. I’ll be completely honest and just say that if Palworld was a game that I actually thought had merit that could reach beyond appeasing a crowd of temperamental children, I’d be less inclined to care about the fact that it clearly steals the likeness from other IPs. That said, it doesn’t, and so I am. This isn’t behavior that should be rewarded, and I’d be very surprised if the lawyers over at Nintendo weren’t chomping at the bit to take all of the Palworld profits under the argument of stolen property. Frankly, I’d half enjoy seeing it just because I absolutely hate the artwork in the game. It feels uncanny. It feels very artificial.
I’d summarize my whole v i b e here by saying that you shouldn’t give money to the developers over at Pocketpair unless you want to give money to the developers at Nintendo, get it?
GLHF,
-E