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dymk 875 days ago

Character design is copyrightable however, and a few of the pals are straight up copied with the ears tweaked.

HideousKojima 875 days ago

>straight up copied with the ears tweaked.

Do you have a specific example?

bluetidepro 875 days ago

First off, look into how much IP/character design Pokemon stole from Dragon Quest. Pokemon isn't the "og" of this style. Also, the Palworld creator is already known for this style of "rip-off" game. Their other title, Craftopia, was a game they basically ripped directly from Zelda's Breathe of the Wild. They also have a title, Never Grave, which is basically a rip of Hollow Knight. They seem to know how to toe the line without getting sued.

kimbernator 875 days ago

Nearly every element of Palworld seems to be a very blatant imitation of another popular franchise.

- Pokemon, obviously.

- The text when you enter a new area, the fonts, etc all scream BOTW/TOTK to me (among other things to a lesser extent like the into sequence and climbing mechanics).

- The immediate visual of a larger-than-life tree looming over the world is evocative of Elden Ring, and to a lesser extend the emphasis on dodging is very similar to fromsoft games.

- Basic crafting/base-building mechanics from every other early access game released in the last decade.

I'm still really enjoying Palworld, I don't want to sound like I'm being overly critical. It's fun to have all of these elements combined into a fun game that people will forget in a few weeks. It's just obvious that there wasn't a ton of original thought put into the game. It also lacks a lot of very basic features relating to multiplayer progression and team mechanics.

This is the first time I’ve heard Pokémon accused of ripping off Digimon, the Tamagotchi clone released in 1997 that pivoted to becoming a Pokémon clone afterward. Or do you mean that later generations of Pokémon ripped off Digimon?

bluetidepro 875 days ago

Sorry, fixed it. I meant Dragon's Quest.

Ah. Still not a very relevant comparison considering the evidence. There's inspiration, and then there's "ripped elements of the model and didn't even bother modifying the vertex count." https://twitter.com/byofrog/status/1749618893448982776

https://twitter.com/byofrog/status/1749679557387358667

Vt71fcAqt7 875 days ago

They don't have the same vertext count, and you can't just create a different model using the same number of vertices and moving them about anyway*. The author clarifies here:

*Or, you can, but it does not make it any more simple to copy a different design. Maybe the hair could use a brush or something to change it quickly but for the rest of the Pal it would be useless.

a lot of the original pokemon were blatant ripoffs of dragon quest's monsters too

dingnuts 875 days ago

I keep seeing this claim repeated without a citation. I just looked at Wikipedia and could not find any examples, except as it pertains to Dragon Quest Monsters, which does seem similar to Pokemon, but came out in 1998, after Pokemon. Regular Dragon Quest -- which I have not played -- looks like a normal JRPG like Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest Monsters appears to be a monster collector, but the timeline (as mentioned) is wrong.

Care to provide any evidence for this claim? I'm starting to think this is another case of "Kimba the White Lion is a ripoff of The Lion King" and someone is going to have to make a 2.5 hr long YouTube video debunking the Internet's idea that Pokemon is a ripoff of Dragon Quest.

This is the picture going around that this claim seems to be based on. Not a JRPG guy, so I can't tell you which game those DQ designs are from or when they actually debuted, but that doesn't seem to be stopping people from accepting it at face value. https://twitter.com/kelskiYT/status/1749243751460188233

the original dragon quest (and also dragon quest 2, which came out before pokemon) still had monsters in it, whose designs were blatantly ripped off by pokemon. the source is the game, feel free to go check out some dragon quest 1/2 gameplay and look at the monsters.

Scrolled through this longplay and the closest one I could find was Golem, which bears some similarity to James Turner's design for Golurk from Gen V, I suppose (in that they are both stone bipeds). Is that what you're referring to? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmzHrNVelL0

one of several examples, yeah. off the top of my head i can think of dracky, chewlip, cobra kaiser, and bubble slime, but there are lots of others.

bluetidepro 875 days ago

Yup, exactly.

[0] https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-shadow-of-war-i-pu...

falcor84 875 days ago

Is that sort of game mechanic copyrightable/patentable?

The only example of a patentable mechanic I'm familiar with is the Shadow of Mordor "Nemesis" system [0], which is relatively complicated.

thereddaikon 875 days ago

Game mechanics are generally not copyrightable. Nintendo did file patents for some mechanics in the newest Zelda game. I don't know how well those would hold up under court scrutiny, bad patents are approved every day. Pokemon's mechanics were also not fully novel, it was inspired by what was already in 1997 the well established JRPG formula.

BadHumans 875 days ago

Mechanics are cannot be copy-written and there are dozens and dozens of creature collector games that use similar mechanics to Pokemon. Pokemon isn't even the first creature collecting game.

pjc50 875 days ago

I do wonder how this game became quite so successful - it seems to be an indie overnight success despite incredible cheapness and a certain amount of ripoff?

thinkingtoilet 875 days ago

From what I've read, there is a massive amount of disappointment with the previous Pokemon games. I haven't played them but if you read about what the community thinks it's almost entirely negative. They feel like there is no effort put into making those games truly great. This game, apparently, is close enough to Pokemon to scratch the itch and is done well enough. That doesn't explain all the popularity but it explains some of it.

ihuman 875 days ago

Their previous game (Craftopia) did well, and people have been looking forward to this since the first announcement a few years ago

iinnPP 875 days ago

I imagine the impact of big name streamers killing their pals and or people helped.

This tranalates directly (for me) to a lack of hand holding and censorship.

snowram 875 days ago

Palworld creators designed their models to be as close as possible to Pokémon while still staying legally distinct. It is so genius I wonder why no one has thought about doing this before.

rantallion 875 days ago

> as close as possible to Pokémon while still staying legally distinct

I'm definitely not an expert on the matter, so this is just curiosity. How can something be so similar that the average person looks at it and thinks it's a Pokémon clone and not count as a derivative work?

piaste 875 days ago

Copyright covers the specific work of art you created, not anything that looks like it. Birdman didn't violate Batman's copyright even being an international callback. Nor did every superhero movie that tried really hard to copy Nolan's style after his trilogy.

It was perfectly fine in 2023 to create a cartoon about a prankster mouse called Nicholas sailing a steamboat. What became legal in 2024, with the copyright expiration, was to give him those exact pants and ears and call him Mickey.

I'm not familiar with Pokémon, so I'm not sure if the PW cartoon monsters are literal copies of the originals or just drawn in the same style.

https://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p22_derivative_work...

rantallion 875 days ago

Copyright laws vary between countries. I imagine a UK court might treat things differently, given our Copyright Service's rules:

> Legally only the copyright owner has the right to authorise adaptations and reproductions of their work - this includes the making of a derivative work.

But of course, this all comes down to whether or not a court considers it derivative, which is what I was curious about.

Boogie_Man 875 days ago

I think the distinction is that they think it's a Pokemon clone, not that they think it's a Pokemon.

The “looseness” of the copies is up for debate. Comparisons of the 3D models against the latest Pokémon games’ models have raised a lot of suspicion: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/palworld-pokemon-pl...

tourmalinetaco 875 days ago

Nintendo has no leg to stand on and they know it. Otherwise they would have acted immediately, just as they did for the PalWorld Pokémon mod that was foolishly shown off before being publicly released.

nintendo are the most overly litigious company i'm familiar with, if nothing comes of it then i guess it must mean they don't think they have a winnable case

whythre 875 days ago

Or the gears turn slowly… but either way I hope palworld is able to do their thing.

HideousKojima 875 days ago

In addition to the already mentioned Digimon, there are already several other games with similar styles and ideas, like Yokai Watch or Robopon.

swashboon 875 days ago

Game mechanics are not copyrightable.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1749183059877085396.html

StephenSmith 875 days ago

But character Design is. Here's a good summary of just how close a lot of the characters are.

fkyoureadthedoc 875 days ago

There aren't even close enough to confuse someone who doesn't watch/play Pokemon.

If you showed me any given pal or Pokemon and asked me if it was a Pokemon, I couldn't tell you. They are obviously in the same style. But looking at that page I don't think they are actual copies, and I don't think anyone shown both at once would not be able to distinguish them.

Vt71fcAqt7 875 days ago

I can't believe they have the gall to infringe on gamefreak inventions such as sheep and porcupines...

Sirizarry 875 days ago

I couldn’t finish the list because by the time I got to shaymin it’s obvious that the majority of this is just picking out details that look similar NOT the same. Bunch of nitpicking with no substance.

doublerabbit 875 days ago

close != is.

Unless you have solid proof that the characters were taken from Pokemon.

The Lion King characters look close to Kimba The White Lion

ReactOS is close to Windows

Close isn't an argument you can really fight upon. This is why we have so many knock-offs of toys, computer kit and the likes.