In a series of fiery tweets, an ex-character designer of Palworld has publicly accused Pocketpair of instructing designers to create monsters that resemble Pokemon designs. A Japanese illustrator called Jun (ジュン) who claimed to be the designer of the Water Pal Surfent, lashed out on X with an alt account, @eb_kemo. The tweet gained 35,700 Views, 248 Likes, and 144 Reposts before it was deleted before this article was published.
The former Palworld illustrator expressed their frustration, opened their tweet with, “I don’t care if it’s a breach of contract.” They added, “More than that, I, as a former character designer involved in the project, will not forgive you all.”
According to the ex-designer, Pocketpair CEO had a cavalier attitude towards potential legal issues. Allegedly higher-ups are confident that they “won’t get sued” because they “know Nintendo.”
Jun further claimed they were specifically instructed to “design [a monster based on] Pokemon listed in the top 100 popularity rankings.” Based on Gamewith’s 2023 Top 100 Popularity Ranking poll, the 10 most popular Pokemon in Japan were:
- Meowscarada: 2,674 votes.
- Fuecoco: 2,148 votes.
- Chandelure: 2,022 votes.
- Sylveon: 1,991 votes.
- Tinkaton: 1,896 votes.
- Lucario: 1,874 votes.
- Mimikyu: 1,815 votes.
- Clodsire: 1,773 votes.
- Gengar: 1,715 votes.
- Gardevoir: 1,628 votes.
This directive appears to have put Jun in a moral dilemma, “But I don’t want to make rip-offs,” they said to their boss. Despite their objections, at the end of the day, they allege that their original designs were altered into a “synthetic chimera,” disregarding originality and concerns.
I said, “But I don’t want to make rip-offs.” However, you modified my monster design into a ‘synthetic chimera’ anyway. So you don’t care what you do as long as you have the right [to do so]? Huh? That’s the end of it, yeah right!
When they’re no longer working on Palworld and finally see the game’s commercial, Jun is in disbelief. “[Feelings of] Shock, pain, betrayal, anger, and…” they wrote. “I’m disappointed in [Pocketpair] for so casually trampling on the feelings of designers who made efforts to avoid plagiarism.”
However, that’s not all. Jun also had to endure being called a “plagiarist” by Nintendo and many people on social media. Even if some of Palworld monster designs weren’t modified to resemble well-known Pokemon. “I had to put up with slanders against the designers, too. I really did.”
The chain of tweets ended with Jun saying they weren’t “running away.” They had to keep quiet “for a long, long, long time” because of contractual obligations. But sparked by Nintendo’s patent lawsuit, the illustrator decided enough was enough and finally spoke out.
