Pokemon TCG Pocket pulls card art after apologizing for plagiarizing an illustration that an artist posted 4 years ago, leaving us with an unintentionally hilarious placeholder

Update: Our resident Pokemon TCG Pocket experts have encountered the plagiarized, now-deleted Ho-Oh EX card art out in the wild, and the resulting placeholder card really is something to see, a barren artifact of a very rare and public screw-up for Pokemon art. Behold:

Original story:

We all make mistakes at work, but luckily, most of ours aren't as public as Pokemon TCG Pocket using fan art for Ho-Oh in the new expansion, Wisdom of the Sea and Sky, which seems to have affected two rare cards.

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Yesterday, an artist shared a tweet that showed the three-star rarity Ho-Oh EX card alongside their own artwork, a paid commission they'd posted to Twitter back in 2021. They simply captioned it with several question marks, and it has since garnered over 33.8 million views.

Today, the official Pokemon TCG Pocket Twitter account released a statement: "It has come to our attention that there was a production issue regarding the illustration of Ho-Oh featured in the immersive card artwork for Ho-Oh EX (3-Star) and Lugia EX (3-Star)."

It identifies the issue: "The card production team provided incorrect reference materials as official documents to the illustrator commissioned to create these cards." For now, both cards have been replaced with placeholder text that reads "New Art Coming Soon," and the statement affirms that new material will come "as soon as it's ready."

While the statement doesn't directly mention the artist who alleges their work was used, it does offer apologies to "the talented illustrators who bring the Pokemon world to life" and reassures "we are also conducting a broader investigation to ensure no similar issues exist elsewhere in the game."

The original artist shared a statement (with an English version they say they used "a translator" for) which reads: "I appreciate the prompt resolution and hope this matter rests here."

Unfortunately, artwork that hasn't been licensed or commissioned ending up in games is nothing new. At least for Pokemon TCG Pocket, it's just two cards, but for the Marathon alpha, many designs were lifted from an indie artist without pay.

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