Did Palworld STEAL Pokemon's Art Style? || SPEEDPAINT + COMMENTARY

I believe the Pokémon Company put out a statement on their Japanese site that said they were going to investigate if their assets were used in the creation of Palworld.

It's especially frustrating when you look at smaller games such as Moonstone Island and Cassette Beasts which feature 100% original designs. The latter even has an artillerex

I genuinely think a generative algorithm would have resulted in more original monster designs. The only way get get designs like this is to just take a bunch of pokemon and change one or two elements. The developers aren't trying to hide what they are - in Japanese interviews, the company head stated plainly that they have no artistic vision, just make twists on games that are already popular, and only care about how many people play their games. Their past roster is a straight board game rip with some AI elements, a breath of the wild ripoff that even copied stuff like UI elements and musical riffs, Palworld, and next up a Hollow Knight clone with a different art style. EDIT: aaaaaand you made the exact same point. Props for due diligence I guess, that's what I get for commenting halfway through

PalWorld lead artist used to be a Fakemon creator who was hired for the job. This explains, at least a bit, why Pal Monsters look so much like Pokémon.

It's annoyingly fitting that I got a Palworld ad at the start of this video.

Personally except for the artstyle I think Palworld is better compared to games such as Ark: Survival Evolved. (Where you also tame creatures- mostly realistic looking dinos- to do work for you and battle) and does not scratch the same itches as it were.

This is the most level headed take on the matter that I’ve heard so far, and most in line with my own thoughts. It’s disappointing most of the discussion has been irrational and dismissive, ripe with trolling and harassment.

Thank you so much for covering this. As an artist and diehard childhood Pokémon fan it had been bugging me over the past few days how Palworld’s designs are so similar to Pokémon’s and the company that made Palworld pass it off as original. U have my deepest gratitudes🙏

You are the first youtuber ive heard bring up SMT when talking about a monster collectors. With that being in my top 5 favorite franchises im happy to hear it being brought up.

Just here to say that legally, you can't steal an art style because art style isn't something that can be copyrighted. There's absolutely nothing wrong with designing something that was inspired artistically from another thing

It’s just sad to think the Palworld team didn’t expend a little more effort to create unique designs, and still have a creature collecting experience. To closely mimic the design language of an already existing roster of classic characters, shows a lack of confidence to innovate

If you're using someone's IP like one of those Avatar creators, mixing and matching parts, it seems like you shouldn't be rewarded for it. Luckily for Palworld they hit the right combination of culture wars and desperate gamers to have a built in defense to keep them from seeing any real damage and likely encouraging them and other people to want to continue on this path. I live with someone who's never played pokemon a day in his life but he got caught up in playing and defending it when someone said Vegans hated it therefore more people should play it to anger vegans. Like there's these two extreme sides lobbing wild accusations like trebuchet ammo and in the middle there's a CEO who's perfectly willing to set art on fire if he can make a dollar not getting hit by any of it.

In a way, Palworld is the perfect encapsulation of making something for a starving market. PALworlds art style was designed to be a carbon copy of pokemon in order to fill a gap in the market. Palworld is a ripoff, of many things, but it did something Gamefreak and Nintendo didn’t. I’m an artist too, and one that copies styles for a living, so I get what Palworld was going for. In this instance it did pay off but in my opinion it isn’t a trick others can pull off twice. It feels to me like a one and done, because now anyone else who does this will be labeled a lazier cash grab and “at least Palworld was fun”

Didnt Byo come out and say he made that post up and his claim was false.

My biggest problems of Palworld designs is that they look so generic that makes the game boring to look at, I don't even like the design philosophy of pokémon since gen 6 and still their designs are miles better because they have purpose, not saying all Pals look bad but many have 0 original thought put into them, and the monsters don't mix well with realistic guns like what it feels like a Newsground joke game made by an edgy teen, they should had gone with Monster Hunter or realistic pokémons designs, but then again this would mean effort and care should be put in the project, meanwhile Palworld just seem like these games that only have a 1 month shelf life

So the tweet of the ai pokemon thing, i honestly thought he was taking the piss cause ive been out of the loop with pokemon for years and i really didnt see the ai generated pokemon as matching the actual pokemon design. If anything they look more similar to pokemon ripoff or wannabe monsters games youd see in an app store or bootleg.

What is the title of the music used around 15:00? It's not one of the titles used in the description.

As a fan of monster taming games like smt and digimon, I'm really happy you made this video. It is great with well thought arguments

I think the way I would describe my feelings about Palworld are "it does have the right to exist, but that doesn't make it immune to criticism about its concept".* Heavily derivative works happen all the time, such as the influx of supernatural romance books after the success of Twilight for example. All of those books, legally, having the right to exist and make money from themselves, but you can tell exactly what inspired them and what trend they were chasing. It is also true that these books were/are often seen as cheap money grabs, but that doesn't mean people can't enjoy them and be further inspired. With Palworld, I do not imagine The Pokemon Company has any legal ground to sue Pocketpair or what have you, but I do think that Palworld is intentionally derivative of Pokemon---and, to be clear, I don't mean just because they're the same genre (creature collecting). I think that Palworld is specifically derivative because of the contrast it causes with the fact that there's guns as main weapons, you can butcher pals for their meat, and you can put them to work on (basically) a factory line. Basically, I'm arguing that Palworld uses designs strongly inspired by Pokemon primarily for shock value. You can see exactly where they got their ideas from, though people can still enjoy it. As for my opinion, it's basically what I said before: I think that Palworld should be "allowed" to exist, but I find it to be just kinda...there? I, again, feel this "childhood ruined" sort of shock value from and it doesn't grab me--I feel that there's many ways to do that sort of thing better than Palworld did as well. Frankly though, I have been discouraged from interacting with it because it just seems like a topic that somebody will criticize your stance on, no matter what your stance is, so I've just decided to avoid it mostly. *Also, this doesn't mean The Pokemon Company or franchise is immune to criticism either Edit: clarity/grammar

Not really a big fan of Pokemon so I'm staying completely neutral on this. I'm more curious about how all of this will end-up because either situations will have a drastic effect on either Palworld or on the gaming landscape. Clearly the guy for as lazy as he is with his "ideas and inspirations" are, he found a way to grab the market by the balls with his recent game Palworld, so he's clearly onto something. Him pushing the line will determine whether in the coming years we'll have a shit ton more Pokemon clones just to profit off of that new found market.