Palword Devs Had "No Intention" Of Infringing Pokemon Copyright

thegamer.com:

Palworld has absolutely exploded in popularity over the weekend, amassing millions of players and generating all kinds of controversies regarding its Pal designs. Having sensed very clear and obvious inspirations in Palworld's Pals, Pokemon fans took to social media and accused developer Pocketpair of everything from laziness to outright plagiarism, scooping up dozens of examples of Pals extremely similar to existing Pokemon.

It was enough for some Pokemon fans to claim Nintendo itself could get involved with how blatant some of them are, but Pocketpair CEO and Palworld lead developer Takuro Mizobe isn't particularly concerned about potential legal threats. In a recent interview with Japanese news outlet Automation (thanks Kotaku), Mizobe claims that Palworld has already cleared all the legal reviews put against Palworld and that no legal action has been taken against the game yet.

We make our games very seriously, and we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies.

In fact, Mizobe has actually made some interesting comments regarding the Pokemon comparisons in a different interview published a few days ago. In this interview, he explains that while he thinks the Pokemon series is a "great predecessor", he doesn't really see the comparisons between the two in terms of gameplay, instead likening Palworld to something more like Ark: Survival Evolved.

Unfortunately, Mizobe's comments probably won't convince Palworld's biggest detractors out there, some of whom have gone to even greater lengths to prove Pocketpair is guilty of plagiarism. Not content to just sit there and point at similarities between certain Pals and their supposed Pokemon equivalents, some have even managed to prove that some Pals share identical models to the Pokemon they've clearly ben inspired by.

Palworld may not have had any legal threats right now, but the game's sudden spike in popularity has to have turned heads at Nintendo and The Pokemon