Former Pokemon Company legal head says Palworld "looks like the usual ripoff nonsense that I would see a thousand times a year"

Palworld.

Palworld's explosive rise continues even as it attracts a whole lot of criticism for its similarities to Pokemon. One person who's very much unimpressed is a former head of The Pokemon Company's legal team.

Dan McGowan, head of Pokemon's legal team from 2008 to 2020, tells Game File that Palworld "looks like the usual ripoff nonsense that I would see a thousand times a year when I was Chief Legal Officer of Pokémon. I’m just surprised it got this far."

Given the Pokemon legal team's vested interest in defending the franchise from every sort of infringement imaginable, McGowan's take on Palworld probably isn't too surprising. But the new game has also drawn plenty of criticism from the gaming community itself. While Pokemon-inspired creature collecting games have been around for years without causing much controversy, the similarity of some designs in Palworld to specific Pokemon counterparts has been raising some real eyebrows.

2. This one, also posted a lot on Twitter. Exact same face, same teeth placement, white and yellow eyes, identical pic.twitter.com/asmlDfHlTLJanuary 21, 2024

There's a lengthy Twitter thread breaking down the most obvious comparisons between various Pals and Pokemon and, well, you can judge just how much of a 'rip-off' these are for yourself. At a minimum, it does look like Palworld is mimicking a very similar art style to that used in the Pokemon series, and a number of creatures do share similar features to established characters. I am not a lawyer, however, so I can't begin to guess at whether any of this is a proper case of infringement.

For its part, Palworld developer Pocketpair seems unconcerned about potential legal action. CEO Takuro Mizobe recently said the game has passed legal reviews and that "we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies."

Fans, however, are still a little frightened of legal action. Fearing a Nintendo takedown, one Palworld modding community has banned links to a Pokemon mod so that "lawyers don't nuke all of us."