Palworld's January 2024 launch was met with sweeping comparisons to Pokemon - and eventually a lawsuit from Nintendo - and in something of a dubious full-circle moment for developer Pocketpair, a new game has emerged that looks like Palworld, Pokemon, and Zelda: Breath of the Wild put into a blender.
In full transparency and fairness, Palworld's creatures, Pals, share similarities with, but aren't direct copies of, specific Pokemon and the game itself is quite distinct from Pokemon in many ways. Meanwhile, Pickmon, from developer Pocketgame, looks like a completely unserious, blatant ripoff of not only Palworld but Pokemon and Breath of the Wild as well, featuring monster designs, environments, and gameplay features ripped directly from those games. I don't know if it's AI, but it reeks of AI slop. Take a look:
Catching up with Pocketpair publishing lead John "Bucky" Buckley at GDC 2026, we have the chance to show him the above trailer for the first time, and he responds with a mix of feigned enthusiasm and genuine curiosity.
"Survival crafting creature game – cool," he says. "Definitely been a few of those since Palworld. Not the first, I guess – there's been a few of these since we released.
"Be curious to know what country that's from. Got the katakana, though, that's definitely not Japanese," Bucky adds.
I couldn't find much on Pocketgame online, but it's worth noting the 'likes' from the developer on YouTube comments accusing it of "blatant" plagiarism, "stolen" designs, and the use of AI-generated content. Again, unserious.
We ask Bucky straight-up if he thinks Pickmon is a clone, and he's understandably reluctant to make any accusations after learning about the game for the first time.
"I'd have to look into that a bit more. But yeah, that trailer – certainly interesting. And that company name – Pocket Game – it's an interesting, uh. This is genuinely the first time I've seen this. Someone is a fan of the genre, I guess," says Bucky.
"I'd be curious to know who the team are, what country they're from. That's, you know, all I can say for the moment – that's definitely a company that didn't exist until that reveal. I'd be curious to know who the parent company is. I'm assuming there is one."
Amid the seemingly unfettered proliferation of AI slop, we're likely to continue seeing these sorts of barely legally distinct ripoffs sprout up from all over the place, and as such, lawsuits from companies who feel their intellectual property is being used, referenced, or mimicked illegally. In fact, there's little doubt Nintendo's lawyers are rubbing their hands together watching this Pickmon trailer at this very moment.
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