The Palworld Controversy

So, Palworld was released the other day and there is a lot of controversy surrounding it already which I will talk about today.

As a quick disclaimer: I have purchased the game. I have played a bit over 21 hours at the time of writing this. I do enjoy the game a lot. At the time of writing this, most of these claims can be debunked due to a lack of evidence in support of them. As time goes on, this may change. If there is any evidence that supports a lot of these claims, I may stop playing the game and I may write about it. But as it stands, I don’t see an issue with supporting this game based on my values and opinions.

1. What is Palworld?
2. The AI Art Accusations
3. The Plagiarism Accusations
4. Is Palworld glorifying Animal Cruelty?
5. Is Pocket Pair dodgy? – Early Access titles and Inspiration
6. Arguing in Bad Faith

What is Palworld?

Palworld could be described as the anime version of Ark: Survival Evolved.

It’s an Early Access title recently released by Pocket Pair, a Tokyo-based indie studio, that has the player explore an open world while struggling for survival. You build a base, engage in combat, explore dungeons and capture cute critters called “Pals” that aid you in various tasks from crafting to traversal to gathering items.

Ark: Survival Evolved is that big open-world survival game where you tame dinos and use them in combat and stuff. Pocket Pair did say in the past that they heavily got inspired by Ark and Rust – and it shows.

From the progression system and tech tree of the game to the base building and survival mechanics, the game is heavily inspired by these titles. 

The developers, however, also wanted to do more with the premise of living together with these creatures and as such, you need to take care of them, pat them, feed them, and build recreational facilities for them.

The AI Art Accusations

So, when Palworld released to roaring success, the biggest arguments made against it weren’t about animal abuse or plagiarism but rather AI. Eventually, the discourse went on to those two topics because the AI stuff was not only just based on assumptions and logical fallacies but also a rather weak argument to make in the first place.

To clarify here, a lot of people do not like the art style of the pals in Palworld and as such have deemed it to be “AI Art”. AI Art is morally objectable and as such, people hated it because someone said that the game is made using AI. 

This is what you call the moralistic fallacy. It’s the assumption that something is illegal solely on personal dislike or disapproval. Fallacies are a type of error in reasoning or a flawed argument that makes an argument invalid, unsound or misleading.

But the original claim that it’s made via “AI Art” is based on their previous game, AI: Art Imposter, which does indeed use AI Art – and the developers are open and transparent about it, too, in that case. So, them not disclosing it in Palworld even though they’re obligated to (According to Valve’s new ToS) and even though they did before seems unlikely. 

To assume that Palworld uses AI simply because their previous game used AI and without any further evidence, is also a logical fallacy – more precisely, this is called the fallacy of hasty generalization.

Not all generalizations are problematic, of course, especially when it’s based on a big sample group… but in this case, we have one game that is using AI and three other games that are not, so it’s weird to go from one to the other.

Edit: If you do not want to support Palworld or the other games because the money raised here could support the AI-based game, that is fine. It’s a valid concern to have. However, I’m not sure if that is how it works behind the scenes. After all, big companies have been seen laying off staff for their other non-main games in the past even when theoretically one game could fund another.

Furthermore, people make assumptions based on the CEO and founder of the company, Takuro Mizobe, liking AI and Crypto… but just because he has a side hustle in the Crypto space, that doesn’t mean that the developers develop NFTs or whatever. If that were the case, we really shouldn’t support Final Fantasy, right?

Rather, Mizobe has been seen tweeting about BuzzFeed’s use of AI to generate “Pokémon” that looks very similar to the original Pokémon. As such, Takuro Mizobe did state that concepts such as “Artist” and “Copyright” may vary vastly 30 years from now.

Looking at it objectively… or assuming positive intent, this looks like either curiosity or concern. There is no language here that signifies endorsement or a need to incorporate this into their company. But people share these tweets all the time, acting as if this is evidence for something.

The Plagiarism Accusations

Next up, people are claiming that Palworld is committing plagiarism.

The big problem here is that people do not know what plagiarism is. They just simply act as if they do and as if they’re some legal authority on what constitutes and what doesn’t constitute plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the act of presenting someone else’s ideas, words or work as one’s own without giving them proper credit or acknowledgement. Here is an amazing video on the topic.

So, a sentiment I see a lot is that game mechanics got stolen by Pocket Pair, particularly ones from Zelda: Breath of the Wild. After all, the game has a temperature gauge and it lets you ride on animals and use a parachute.

The problem here is that Nintendo doesn’t own the idea of those mechanics. They also took inspiration somewhere – and if it’s not a different game, then they must have seen the idea in real life and thought “Hey that could be fun in the game”.

Taking inspiration from something like real-life temperatures… or real-life parachutes… or real-life animals… is fine. You can do that. Anyone can. If we didn’t take inspiration from somewhere, the game industry would not exist.

Pokémon’s premise of “gotta catch ’em all” is heavily inspired by collectable figures, Tamagotchi, catching bugs in rural Japan, and Megami Tensei. Their designs are inspired by real-life animals, Dragon Quest, folklore, real-life objects, pop culture and mythology.

Palworld is a parody, of course, and it never was out of the question that it is anything but. I think some similarities are unavoidable when you parody a whole franchise of games – but at its core, Palworld is not a Pokémon clone – and the anime-inspired creatures do fly a bit too close to the sun at times with their designs… but for the most part, I don’t see the similarities that people claim to exist.

When you design a cat, a dog or a bird, there are not too many different routes you can take. You can only add so many things before it eventually is not recognizable as a cat. That’s also the reason why all of Pokémon’s cats look so similar, aside from Skitty. 

Here’s a comparison of a literal hedgehog, Jolthog and Shaymin. People claim that Jolthog is plagiarism because it looks similar to Shaymin… but it also looks similar to a literal hedgehog.

Somewhat recently, an anonymous account on Twitter (created in January) started sharing video comparisons of Pokémon SV rigs and Palworld rigs. These were faked. They apologized later for making statements that could “possibly have been misleading”.

Another thread over here (in French) shows that the meshes do not align, proving that the thread I mentioned earlier was faked. This person investigated and noticed that a lot of the models may have been inspired by models created in-house by Pocket Pair – and it’s a really good read if you’re interested in seeing how stuff like that can be investigated and proven.

Frankly, to take inspiration from something is an honour for the original work. It’s a good thing. But just because something looks similar, that doesn’t mean that it was directly inspired by it. A lot of the pals are literally just animals, period. There is a thread on Twitter that I found incredibly funny because of how much it sounds like a conspiracy. One comparison made there is that the Chikipi (a literal chicken) is “Rowlet BUT CHICKEN”, which is absurd.

To claim that this is “plagiarism” is a very extreme accusation and one that can seriously damage the reputation of a company and threaten people’s livelihoods. It is unfathomable that people can throw around a word of such severity with no proof whatsoever. 

Not to mention that if Nintendo is not suing at the moment (they are investigating but they didn’t sue for 3+ years, so why now?), why are armchair lawyers on Twitter arguing about whether or not this is illegal? 

Is Palworld glorifying Animal Cruelty?

No.

This one’s rather simply disputed because when you play the game (as I have), you will notice that the game glorifies animal abuse just as much as Pokémon and other Creature Collection games do.

Frankly, you have the tools to potentially harm Pals in this game – but you do have them in real life, too.

Just because you can theoretically kick puppies IRL, that doesn’t mean that you will do it. It’s the same in Palworld. Yes, you physically weaken them at first by punching them… but if you want to, you can also use traps to capture Pals instead… I don’t see how punching them yourself is worse than sending your dog out to hurt other animals. That’s fucked in its own right, isn’t it?

So, to put it simply, Palworld allows for certain things to be done within the context of a parody. You can capture humans but the game judges you for it, stating that it’s considered inhumane. You can butcher pals but the game will censor it, thus making you feel worse for doing it… not to mention that it’s inefficient.

All resources you can gain by butchering your pals are also obtainable by capturing or hunting pals in the wild… just like in real life. All that said, letting them graze on your ranch or having them live a happy life is much more efficient in terms of gameplay and yields much more resources than being cruel.

I butchered one pal and I only did it to see whether or not the player was incentivized to do it… They’re not. I got fewer resources from that sheep than I would have if I had let it graze for five minutes.

As such, in my opinion, Palworld is solely giving players the tools to be as morally horrible as they want to be – but it always holds a mirror in front of them and shows them what they’ve done. It’s shock humour but the game doesn’t require you to do so. For most of the game, you don’t see guns and you don’t make pals suffer. 

But the people who criticize the game do not know that because they haven’t played the game.

Is Pocket Pair dodgy? – Early Access titles and Inspiration

So, one big part of this controversy is the fact that Craftopia, Pocket Pair’s other big game, is also still in Early Access. People claim that the developers sold a fully priced title and just abandoned it because Craftopia is soon nearing its fourth year in Early Access… but in reality, that’s just wrong.

So, Craftopia is an Open World Survival Crafting type of game and has received frequent major updates over the past few months with most coming in December. December added a new biome, for instance, which is huge and in June there was a major game overhaul with August introducing a new tech tier.

The game just got updates this Monday, so it isn’t abandoned by any means. Just on December 22nd, about a month ago, the developers posted another Roadmap and shared that they are planning to implement new elements, dish out improvements and move towards the official release. If anything, this seems like a good thing.

AI: Art Imposter sucks, in my opinion, because I hate AI. That said, it’s in Early Access alongside Palworld and Craftopia – and soon there will be another game joining the roster of Early Access titles, Never Grave: The Witch and The Curse which will be a Roguelike-Metroidvania game with Basebuilding mechanics. Looking forward to that!

This screenshot is from Never Grave’s press kit. Go wishlist it if you haven’t yet!

The fact that this company is working on four different Early Access titles at the same time is being heavily criticized by all sorts of players… but a company can have different dev teams and I think that is fine in and of itself. This business practice is perhaps overeager but as long as it doesn’t affect the development of any of the games, I don’t see a problem with working on four games at the same time.

In the case of these games, though, Craftopia has been giving Zelda: Breath of the Wild a very obvious nod here and there which is fun and a little easter egg and all that. It’s a good little fun thing, in my opinion. Palworld is flying a bit too close to the sun here and there… and Never Grave is inspired by Hollow Knight‘s colour palette but by no means “stealing from them”.

CrowSworn‘s art style is much, much, much closer to Hollow Knight’s, and Hollow Knight’s developers are approving of CS.

This screenshot is from CrowSworn’s press kit. Go wishlist the game if you haven’t yet!

So, all that said, I wouldn’t call Pocket Pair scummy by any means. Rather, I find their studio ambitious. Interviews with the CEO have shown that they take copyright very seriously and that they do not want to infringe on other studio’s intellectual properties.

At the same time, though, they take inspiration and mix and mash game mechanics together which is cool. They don’t steal, they get inspired. If they were to copy something 1:1 and implement it into their own game while also claiming they invented it, that’d be a different story, altogether.

The big problem here is that without inspiration, the video game industry wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t have video games if it weren’t for other video games. If this was illegal, Final Fantasy wouldn’t exist – and we all love and adore that series, no?

To fulfill the holy trifecta, here is a screenshot from Hollow Knight’s press kit. Go play it if you haven’t yet!

I mean, when the game was developed, it was a last-ditch effort to create something successful and the studio essentially ripped off Dragon Quest which was incredibly popular at the time. Their final fantasy game, titled Final Fantasy, was incredibly successful and their gamble paid off. They got to live on to tell the story.

If we became super critical of small developers for getting inspired by stuff, we wouldn’t have all the Vampire Survivors games, all the cool Roguelike games (that are like “Like Rogue”), we wouldn’t have cool 3D or 2D Platformers (like Hollow Knight or Celeste), we wouldn’t have intriguing RPG or Visual Novels, and we certainly wouldn’t have Pokémon.

Imagine a world without Pokémon… all the toxic fandom and this whole controversy wouldn’t exist… Oh, shit, maybe we should attack GameFreak for getting inspired by Megami Tensei and other RPGs. Maybe we should cancel them, after all… retroactively.

Arguing in Bad Faith

All those dystopian fantasies and jokes aside, without inspiration, we wouldn’t have games, and people are being hypocritical about all of this. They are arguing in bad faith.

The toxic parts of the Pokémon fandom do not care whether or not Palworld is in the wrong or right here. They do not care about ethics and plagiarism – just like GamerGate was never about ethics in journalism.

Rather, this is all just about Salt. 

Nintendo and GameFreak released Pokémon Scarlet & Violet in a state that was frankly absurd given the price tag. There were bugs and performance issues, the game didn’t feel great, a lot of the mons themselves didn’t look amazing, and the save files got corrupted. 

Despite all that, the game essentially costs the players nearly double the price of Palworld which is developed by a smaller studio from scratch with bigger and better ideas and it runs better. It is in Early Access meaning that the game will only improve from here on out. Preposterous!

People are arguing with bad intentions or in bad faith because they do not like seeing this other game succeed when their favourite franchise arguably has grown complacent and stagnant.

Most of the people that are making up arguments and evidence, faking proof, and accusing an indie studio of something they didn’t do… They either do it out of maliciousness or ignorance.

I do want to assume positive intent and hence have asked frequently for sources whenever sources and evidence were mentioned… but they all link to each other. One thread links to another that links to another and that one links to the first thread. It’s a circle jerk.

So, all in all, I just wanna say that we should all assume ignorance and positive intentions when it comes to discussions and debates like this rather than immediately jumping to conclusions based on logical fallacies and a lack of evidence. 

Chances are that if there is no evidence for a thesis, maybe you’re just wrong. And that’s fine.

If people actually played Palworld, they would see that it isn’t “Pokémon with Guns” but rather a good and not-at-all-overwhelming Survival game. I’m glad that we have it around to ease players into a genre that causes me more headaches than fun.

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

If you see this article anywhere else other than Indiecator.org… then this article has been stolen. Please let me know of this via E-Mail. Other than that, feel free to stop by my Twitch streams!