TheRetroArcade
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Posts: 1,989
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
I don't feel good.
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Back in our January 2024 launch impressions of Palworld, I wasn't kind about its shameless design counterfeiting, calling its creatures "a surreal gallery of familiar eyes, limbs, and silhouettes" built from "the reassembled pieces of existing Pokémon, adding a color swap and a couple tweaked details to hide the Frankenstein stitching."
I understand now that I had no idea what shamelessness really looks like. True shamelessness looks like Pickmon, which appeared as a Steam listing this week and should immediately communicate the depth of its blatant apery with its name alone. I mean, look at that thing. That's just Pikachu with dyed eyebrows and a couple bits stuck on. Come on, man.
Like Palworld, Pickmon claims to be an open-world survival game where you'll "team up with your Pickmon to fight, farm, and build industrial empires." And yes, its Pokémon have guns, too.
Compared to Pickmon, however, Palworld feels like a paragon of creative integrity. Pickmon hasn't filed the serial number off of Pokémon—it's just crossed it out with crayon. And it didn't stop there: In its trailers and screenshots, Pickmon is also copying homework from the Legend of Zelda, Overwatch, and even Palworld itself.
Take a look at its key art. In addition to Yassified Meganium and the aforementioned Sleep Paralysis Pikachu, there's somebody cosplaying Breath of the Wild-era Link while surfing a Temu Charizard and brandishing a submachinegun.
The tower nearby is capped with a FF14 aetheryte for good measure, and down below—in an achievement of creative bankruptcy—is a creature that's an exact midpoint between Palworld's Anubis and the Lucario design on which it's based.
Pickmon is doing knockoffs of knockoffs. We've reached knockoff singularity. And that's not all. We've also got:
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
While the inspirations are extremely obvious, it's not likely that anything here is blatant enough to meet a threshold of legally actionable intellectual property infringement. After all, character design similarities weren't the basis of Nintendo's Palworld lawsuit, which was based instead on patents that Nintendo holds on—among other things—a specific implementation of catching monsters in throwable orbs.
And don't worry: Pickmon developer PocketGame and publisher Netw...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
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Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
Back in our January 2024 launch impressions of Palworld, I wasn't kind about its shameless design counterfeiting, calling its creatures "a surreal gallery of familiar eyes, limbs, and silhouettes" built from "the reassembled pieces of existing Pokémon, adding a color swap and a couple tweaked details to hide the Frankenstein stitching."
I understand now that I had no idea what shamelessness really looks like. True shamelessness looks like Pickmon, which appeared as a Steam listing this week and should immediately communicate the depth of its blatant apery with its name alone. I mean, look at that thing. That's just Pikachu with dyed eyebrows and a couple bits stuck on. Come on, man.
Like Palworld, Pickmon claims to be an open-world survival game where you'll "team up with your Pickmon to fight, farm, and build industrial empires." And yes, its Pokémon have guns, too.
Compared to Pickmon, however, Palworld feels like a paragon of creative integrity. Pickmon hasn't filed the serial number off of Pokémon—it's just crossed it out with crayon. And it didn't stop there: In its trailers and screenshots, Pickmon is also copying homework from the Legend of Zelda, Overwatch, and even Palworld itself.
Take a look at its key art. In addition to Yassified Meganium and the aforementioned Sleep Paralysis Pikachu, there's somebody cosplaying Breath of the Wild-era Link while surfing a Temu Charizard and brandishing a submachinegun.
The tower nearby is capped with a FF14 aetheryte for good measure, and down below—in an achievement of creative bankruptcy—is a creature that's an exact midpoint between Palworld's Anubis and the Lucario design on which it's based.
Pickmon is doing knockoffs of knockoffs. We've reached knockoff singularity. And that's not all. We've also got:
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
While the inspirations are extremely obvious, it's not likely that anything here is blatant enough to meet a threshold of legally actionable intellectual property infringement. After all, character design similarities weren't the basis of Nintendo's Palworld lawsuit, which was based instead on patents that Nintendo holds on—among other things—a specific implementation of catching monsters in throwable orbs.
And don't worry: Pickmon developer PocketGame and publisher Netw...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?