Pokémon’s former legal boss says Palworld looks like ‘ripoff nonsense’

The former chief legal officer for The Pokémon Company International has said that the breakout hit Palworld looks like “ripoff nonsense”.

Don McGowan, who led the Pokémon Company’s legal team for almost 12 years, was commenting on the game amid claims that its developer Pocketpair plagiarised designs from Nintendo’s game series.

“This looks like the usual ripoff nonsense that I would see a thousand times a year when I was Chief Legal Officer of Pokémon,” he told Game File. “I’m just surprised it got this far.”

Palworld is described by its creator as an “action-adventure survival game” in which players can battle and capture Pals to use for base building, traversal, and combat.

Despite its significantly different tone and game style, many of Palworld’s monster designs bear striking similarities to Pokémon’s, earning it the internet nickname “Pokémon with guns” when it was revealed last summer.

But following its massively successful release for PC and Xbox last week, an anonymous X account appeared online claiming to show evidence of not just design inspiration, but plagiarism of actual assets from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

On Monday, Palworld director and Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe published a response to allegations of plagiarism. While he didn’t deny being influenced by Pokémon, he said the game’s artists had received online abuse and called for it to stop.

“We are currently receiving abusive and defamatory comments against our artists, in addition to tweets that appear to be death threats,” he wrote on X, translated by VGC.

“While we have received various opinions about Palworld, it is important to note that the supervision of all materials related to Palworld is conducted by a team, including myself. I bear the responsibility for the produced materials. I would appreciate it if these comments towards artists involved in Palworld would cease.”