Pokemon Copycat Pickmon Accused Of Stealing Fan Artists' Designs

"Two different fan artists have accused of ripping off their designs for Mega Ceruledge and Mega Meganium. While the Mega Ceruledge ripoff is less blatant, but still pretty bold, artist el.psy.fake's Mega Meganium design appears to be copied 1-to-1 in the game."

"The developer goes by two different names in debut trailer: "PocketGame" and "PokeGame." Both dev names are obvious pokes at Pokemon and Pocket Monsters, which implies that, maybe, they just wanted to piss Nintendo off twice. The publisher's name, NETWORKGO, sounds close enough to Nintendo that I'd wager that's also a not-so-subtle dig, too."

"An upcoming game that's been accused of ripping off designs from other artists and famous franchises like Pokemon has also stolen one of my designs. They didn't even try to change something and make it a bit less obvious."

A game titled Palworld has drawn criticism for appearing to copy Nintendo's Breath of the Wild, but the controversy has expanded beyond Nintendo infringement. Two independent fan artists have accused the developers of directly stealing their designs for in-game creatures. One artist's Mega Meganium design was allegedly copied without any modifications, while another artist's Mega Ceruledge design was also appropriated. The developer uses suspicious naming conventions, operating under both "PocketGame" and "PokeGame," while the publisher NETWORKGO has a history of similar design theft, with their previous game Hainya World appearing to copy MapleStory designs. The situation raises concerns about the development team's integrity beyond their confrontational stance toward major franchises.

Read at Kotaku