With over 5 million copies sold in the first 3 days, Palworld has set the gaming industry on fire. However, with the recent hype in the game, a lot of controversy surrounding image rights and copyright infringements has seemed to plague the developers. Nintendo has taken note of what’s been going on with Palworld, and they don’t seem to be one bit happy. Let’s take a look at what’s been going on so far with regards to this whole copyright drama.
Palworld in a Nutshell
Developed on the recent Unreal Engine 2, the core of Palworld’s mechanics is very similar to Fortnite and its iconic third-person view. It’s not just Fortnite that has influenced the game, though; Palworld, a survival game, has been heavily influenced by the “Ark: Survival Evolved” game. It was none of these two features that really got people installing the game, though.
Palworld was termed “Pokemon with guns” as the game used 3d renders of monster and beast renders that were very similar to the characters in Pokemon. Since everyone who remotely knew about the “Pokemon” ecosystem found this game very relatable, and since then, the game has been breaking records in terms of sales numbers. To sum it all up, Palworld is a Pokemon-themed game with the mechanics of Fortnite and follows the rules of Ark: Survival Evolved.
Nintendo might not be able to win this fight.
Straight up, we have to acknowledge the fact that these renders are very similar to Pokemon, and it does make it look like the developers were ready for a copyright fight at some point in time. The majority of the Pal have been designed by AI, and from the looks of it, the Pokemon world was the biggest inspiration it drew from. Despite these facts, the real question is, does inspiration lead to copyright infringements?
In the end, Palworld creators will argue the fact that they did not steal any asset “as-is.” Instead, they simply improved upon it and created different versions of them. At some point in time, the Pokemon designers too would have used other art for inspiration and included it in their renders. Just because we might not have ever seen what their inspiration was, does that mean they can get away with copyright infringement? It’s a really tricky situation, and unlike what many imagine would happen, Nintendo is going to have a tough time putting a stop to Palworld now that the game has taken off.
They’ve already built a player base faster than any other paid game and managed to get 1.2 million concurrent players. For now, they look like they will be able to take on this legal battle, and we’ll have to see how that turns out.
Whose side are you on?
Personally, I’m really interested in how Pocket Pair (Palworld developers) play their cards and handle the legal side of this whole drama. The CEO claims that there is a team that supervises every asset rendered in the game. Though he does address the Pokemon similarities, he does hint that his team has created these renders with the minimum changes required to avoid breaking any type of copyright infringement laws.
