Some of them seem pretty bad. I feel like the example image with the eyes and the teeth is quite a damning stylistic choice, compared to some of their other monsters which look more like a palette swap and animal change with some model variations. Save for the few that straight up have the same attack, like the Deciduueye example, I think it's reasonable enough to use them for inspiration, although not necessarily the best option. It's a shame they felt the need to rely on something that is popular I think it hurt them a bit by not having as uniform a vision.
That said, even if I do think it's pretty obvious I don't want them to lose this if anything comes of it, Pokemon is just as bad and they have nothing to gain from ruining this persons work other than asserting dominance.
I do hope they use this as a learning opportunity for next time and maybe stop being so goddamn blatant in their "homage". I would have been much more inclined to the game if it felt like the monsters had some rationale behind them because the game is pretty solid overall. All I can say is that I hope the game continues to exist but maybe gets a more original in-world bestiary and not Pokemon Gen 15
Calling this one image damning feels like corporatized media has become so dominant, people don't really get anymore how similar things need to be for it to be an actual legal issue.
Superhero comics have a lot of characters that are obvious ripoffs of characters from other publishers and yet they are still legally distinct enough that they can get away with it. Comes to mind also how Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse to replace Oswald the Lucky Rabbit which, even though he also created, was owned by Universal. Both were rubber hose-styled. black-bodied, white-faced, big-eared animal characters wearing shorts, and yet that was also legally distinct enough for his ownership of the character to be established.
It would take far more than a similar face for Palworld to be liable of anything. Sure, it's enough for people to tell they have tried to imitate it, but by itself that's not grounds for legal action.
There are some claims of copying or tracing meshes going around on social media that could be an actual issue, but the validity of those is still questionable. The Pokémon Company needs to either point out a near identical design, and I do emphasize, near identical, or to prove that stolen assets were used in the game's creation.
I'd argue against the example image being damning in the first place because it's fairly obvious they're both derived from the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, which is well passed the point of being public domain
Not only that but they have entirely different body shapes and color schemes. I doubt a face by itself could be copyrighted. If that was the case a lot of anime would have issues.
For the thumbnail image, they took meoth face, purugly body and that's it
These designs are not "inspired" they simply imported the assets from a pokemon game on blender or something, used "copy and paste" for different body parts and that's it, job done that's their completely original creature, totally not copied
One thing that a lot of people don't seem to realize in this whole discussion is that, whatever you may think of it as far as artistic integrity goes, Pokémon only owns the full complete design of their characters and the actual game files, but not every possible independently produced variation or recombination of those traits. They own Wooloo but they don't own every possible roundish sheep-like creature.
To be fair it's obvious that Palworld's company Pocket Pair doesn't care about originality. But whether the are literally infringing on the Pokémon property is unclear, and a lot of people are making serious but baseless accusations out of snowballing social media outrage.
If there's any actual, real issue that warrants a lawsuit, you can be sure that the Pokémon Company's lawyers will find it out. It's not like they need anyone to defend them, we are literally talking about the biggest media brand in the world.
Also the character creator, the depth of personal freedom to make or break relationships, even the wide diversity of npc skin color is awesome. You have a ton of DND races but the NPCs feel somewhat unique from each other even when they are the same race due to the diversity of appearances. The dialogue is well written, the choices you can make are abundant, the music gets in your head, the sheer volume of class actions and customizations that highly affect the way the class plays (DND license well used), and the varying levels of difficulty allow people to approach the game from their own experience and work their way up from there.
But you know the industry will learn the wrong lesson from this.
"Wow, people really like Baldur's Gate 3. I know, it must be the dice rolls! Let's have every interaction in Assassin's Creed: Tropical Freeze be determined by RNG!"
“Instead of getting more accepting of microtransactions these days because they’ve become so normalized, I’m moving the opposite direction. I genuinely resent Diablo 4 for sinking so, so much work into its $15-30 armor sets in the store when they could have been farmable in the game, and in-game sets are already starting to fall behind in the seasonal model.”
You clearly don’t resent it that much, considering you gave Diablo 4 a 9/10.
It's not a burn; it's a poorly constructed comment made out of context. The author's criticism on Diablo 4 is based within the context of Baldur's Gate 3's release. The review for D4 was written before BG3 was released.
yup fuck lootboxes and microtransactions
we just want to buy our games for the promise that everything in it from release is the full experience
expansions in the form of dlc for extra charges can be justified if they add additional content to the game not what was supposed to be in the initial launch(like skimming off the top and selling it back to the consumer👎)
Wait… could Just Stop Oil have done some 5D chess move here? Force Sunak to publicly claim he cares about Stonehenge just before the UNESCO report comes out?
We did it here. I spent years protesting and camping on-and-off when they tried to build the M3 motorway through the Hill of Tara, an ancient site with similarities to Stonehenge.
If you want outrage, then reacting to Stonehenge being in danger from the construction of a road seems much more appropriate than from it getting dusted with colored corn starch.
While U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak criticized Just Stop Oil protestors after they sprayed Stonehenge with rain-dissolvable orange cornflour powder the day before the Summer Solstice earlier this month his government is pressing on with a road tunnel that could alter the monuments ritual landscape for ever.
Hmmmmmmmmm. Where are all the outraged little industry apologists, that were so mad about the lil bit of easily removable paint, from the post last week.
Israel does make some of their own weapons. (Have you ever heard of the Uzi or Desert Eagle?) Just not enough for their current goals. I’ve heard that proposed as a reason the US provides them so many weapons, to suppress the growth of their local weapons industry.
forbes.com
Hot