Palworld recently had a mod that replaces the game’s various Pals with Pokémon, which many saw as a fitting mod since they’re both creature-collecting games. However, Nintendo has taken down several videos with these mods, making Nexus Mods nervous about hosting them.
Matthew Elliot, the Nexus Mods community lead, spoke with PCGamesN about these Pokémon mods, admitting that the website is uncomfortable hosting them. This is due to how Nintendo can be stingy about fan projects, as they tend to take these down without hesitation.
“As you may know, Nintendo (who jointly own the Pokemon franchise) has a consistent record of mercilessly submitting legal challenges, DMCAs, and takedowns against fan-made content,” Elliot tells the website. “Given Palworld’s similarity to the Pokemon franchise as a base game, hosting content that adds copyrighted characters or assets into the game is almost certainly going to put us at risk of legal action.”
Nintendo has been doing this for years, so we’re not too surprised to see Palworld enter the company’s sights in terms of takedowns. While they can’t take the game down, it seems that mods featuring the company’s IP are fair game, hence, the company’s recent actions.
The news is disappointing, though some fans are less sympathetic towards the game since it might be plagiarising existing Pokémon designs and using AI to make them look different. At the time of writing, these are still accusations, but they’re accusations with a ton of merit behind them, as numerous artists have said the likeness and date are too uncanny.
Even with possible plagiarism and AI, that hasn’t stopped fans from buying Palworld in droves, despite the title being on Game Pass. It seems that fans just love the meme of Pokémon with guns and Palworld is more than happy to supply them with these moments.
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Palworld is readily available on Xbox Series and PC, with Game Pass members getting the game as part of the subscription. There might also be plans to bring this game to PS5 but we’ll have to wait and see.