The developers around the overnight sensation Palworld are dealing with more than just pushback against the game. According to multiple people from developer PocketPair, developers and artists of Palworld have been receiving death threats.
The threats seem to stem from allegations against the game for being a “rip off” of Pokemon.
“Frantically working through all my DMs and emails! I promise!” community manager Bucky said on Twitter. “However, you’ll excuse me if I skip over the death threats, threats to the company and massively outlandish claims.”
RELATED: Palworld Already Has a Pokemon Mod
The studio’s CEO, Takuro Mizobe, also took to Twitter to condemn the threats.
“Currently, we are receiving slanderous comments against our artists, and we are seeing tweets that appear to be death threats,” he said.
“I have received a variety of opinions regarding Palworld, but all productions related to Palworld are supervised by multiple people, including myself, and I am responsible for the production. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from slandering the artists involved in Palworld.”
Whether there is justification for the claims of Palworld plagiarizing Pokémon or not, going as far as to issue death threats for any reason, let alone a video game, is not ok and should never happen.
Even if they did copy slight similarities from Pokemon there’s nothing to be done. It doesn’t bother me in anyway and nor should it for others. I remember a case where Mickey Mouses face logo is only trademarked from the front and NOT the side so someone used it for his carwash in some country in South America, Brazil maybe. Similar games/shows like Digimon and Temtem exist and no one has an issue with them.
Well, pokemon ripped off dragon quest creature designs but funny how the pokefans don’t seem to mention that