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PocketPair

Palworld “looks like the usual ripoff nonsense”, says an ex-Pokémon Company lawyer

Dan McGowan, former chief of the legal department at The Pokémon Company for 12 years, shared his thoughts about how far Palworld has managed to get through accusations of plagiarism.

The growth of Palworld continues to be unstoppable, with more than 5 million copies sold and a peak of more than a million and a half simultaneous players on Steam, which places it at the level of true giants. However, Pocketpair is not having completely happy days, as accusations of plagiarism, use of AI, and even some users sending them death threats have plagued the studios since the release.

One of those critical voices, very prominent, is that of a former legal representative of The Pokémon Company, who didn’t hold back any words when it comes to defining the new game of the moment.

“This looks like the usual ripoff nonsense that I would see a thousand times a year when I was Chief Legal Officer of Pokémon,” said Dan McGowan to GameFile. “I’m just surprised it got this far.”

No official statements from The Pokemon Company

Meanwhile, neither The Pokemon Company itself, Game Freak or Nintendo, have made any official statements, the biggest noise coming from the fanbase of the mythical saga. They accuse Pocketpair of practically tracing the designs of some Pokémon onto the Pals, which is what the Palworld creatures are called.

For his part, Takuro Mizobe, CEO of Pocketpair, has assured that they are not afraid of legal retaliation, since they have complied with all the requirements in that regard. “We make our games very seriously,” Mizobe said. “And we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies.”

However, beyond the obvious influences of Pokémon, Palworld’s survival formula has much more in common with games like ARK: Survival Evolved and Conan Exiles than with Pokémon, but as the days go by we will see the repercussion of this matter.

Palworld is now available on Steam and Xbox Series, forming part of the Xbox Game Pass catalog. Even so, there are notable differences between versions.