Artist Claims Pocketpair Made Them Plagiarize Pokemon, & Changed Their Designs After They Refused

We have a shocking new scandal about Palworld and its studio Pocketpair, that brings back questions about the company’s practices.

As translated by Twitter user Lewtwo, this artist was told by Pocketpair to deliberately make creature designs that look like popular Pokemon. When the artist refused, Pocketpair modified those designs to look more like Pokemon without the artist’s knowledge.

Lewtwo shared their own translation of this person’s tweets, which they also cleared with native Japanese speakers to ensure the meaning conveyed was accurate. You can read the translation below:

“It appears that a certain large company is suing a certain indie company. I was a former designer who provided designs to an independent company, but I support a certain large company. I don’t care if I’m breaching contract – but more than that, I, as a former character designer involved [on the project] can’t forgive those guys. Firstly, the CEO said: “I know Nintendo, so they can’t sue me too soon.” And secondly, an instruction I was given: “Please design a creature that would rank in the top 100 of Pokemon, in terms of popularity.”

I said: “But I don’t want to copy anyone.” But, you changed the creature I came up with into some sort of chimera design. So you don’t care what you do as long as you own the rights? Eh? That’s just terrible.

How do you think I felt when I left the company, and watched the new PV? Shock, pain, feelings of betrayal, and anger.

I’m disappointed in those guys for so casually trampling on the feelings of designers who made an effort to avoid plagiarism. The creature I designed has been called for plagiarism – that monster isn’t some kind of artificial chimera. I’ve had to put up with slander against the designers. I really have.

I’ve been holding back for a long, long, long, long, time, for the sake of my contract. Don’t run away from this.”

Lewtwo shared this followup as well:

“further posts were also indicating that their pay was frequently docked if they refused to copy Pokémon designs, also citing Snorlax in particular.”

We found Twitter users Mitchell Johnson and Masterge77 corroborating this translation when they shared the same message from the artist, in their own words.

This artist’s claims will have no bearing on the Palworld lawsuit. As they explained it, since Pocketpair owns the designs, and they revealed that the designs cleared legal review, everything the company did is completely legal.

But they don’t seem to be the actions of a company that people should like. We won’t tell you you’re wrong to like or keep playing Palworld, but Pocketpair doesn’t look like a company fans should be defending.