The modder who put Pokémon into Palword has claimed “Nintendo has come for me” after a takedown of a tweet.
Creator Toasted Shoes took to X/Twitter to tease a Palworld mod with a clip showing Pokémon’s Ash Ketchum in place of the player character, as well as famous Pokémon such as Pikachu replacing Palworld’s Pals.
Palworld is a crafting and survival game dubbed 'Pokémon with guns'. It features monsters called Pals, which some people have said “rip off” Pokémon.
Nintendo has come for me, please leave me in your thoughts and prayers pic.twitter.com/HGg65y67Qp
— Toasted (@ToastedShoes) January 23, 2024
Palworld developer Pocketpair has insisted Palworld is more akin to survival crafting games such as Ark Survival Evolved and Valheim than Pokemon, but that hasn’t stopped people from continuing to hit out at the game.
Within 24 hours of Toasted Shoes’ tweet going live it was hauled offline by an apparant Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown from Nintendo, which publishes the Pokémon video games.
Speaking to IGN, Toasted Shoes said he still plans to publish the full video showcasing the mod, but will comply with any further copyright notices from Nintendo. “We would love to complete the mod pack and release it for free to the public, however for now we are playing it by ear as we don't want any legal troubles,” Toasted Shoes said.
Debate has raged online about whether Nintendo or The Pokémon Company will take legal action over Palworld. CEO of developer Pocketpair, Takuro Mizobe, told Automaton that Palworld had cleared legal reviews, and insisted there has been no action taken against it by other companies.
“We make our games very seriously, and we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies,” Mizobe said.
A Nintendo representative told Bloomberg that the company is aware of Palworld, but declined to comment on individual cases. The Pokémon Company has yet to comment.
Don McGowan, who led the Pokémon Company’s legal team for almost 12 years, told Game File: “This looks like the usual rip off nonsense that I would see a thousand times a year when I was Chief Legal Officer of Pokémon.”
Palworld has now sold an astonishing six million copies in just four days, with an eye-watering 1.7 million peak concurrent player count.
All eyes are on Nintendo and The Pokémon Company to see if the companies take some sort of legal action against Palworld, which is also available on Xbox and Windows PC as a day-one Game Pass title secured by Microsoft.
Perhaps in a bid to avoid any potential issues with Nintendo, mod site Nexus Mods appears to be removing any Pokémon-related mods for Palworld from its site.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
