#also dont want to rain on someones parade for liking a problematic media or whatever

[nebuletteart]

it's pretty annoying seeing so many of the people crying out to support artists and that ai is unethical (both very true takes) playing palworld and shooting down anyones justifiable criticism. I avoided the whole thing for awhile, thinking the talk of plagiarism was greatly exaggerated twitter beef and seeing a lot of big gaming channels jumping to its defense. Wasnt interested in the premise and was content to let it pass by, happy that the game would put pressure on the pokemon company to actually give game freak time to develop a good game for once. And then I saw this.

This is outright stolen, like. laughably stolen. There are other designs too, that outright steal or are questionable. but how the fuck can you say you give one shit about artists and then simp for a game that steals what was most certainly an overworked artists design wholesale? If that was the end of it, I'd side eye loud supporters but not comment.

(Fakemon designed by EtherealHaze)

Yeah. they also pretty blantently stole from a fakemons design. someone already made a post breaking all of everything down it outright steals but i trust ones eyes to see it immediately. I've seen plenty of people cry "but it's always ok to steal from corporations!!" (even if i think that excuse is fucking dogwater when it comes to art) well then, here's your example of them stealing from independent fucking artists!!

Pirate the game if you must but dont claim you care about artists and then turn around and bite our heads off the moment we point out that the game that very clearly plagiarizes artists! Also on the ai thing, even if it hasnt been proven the team used ai for any of the designs, the studio has apparently dabbled in it in the past and the ceo is an ai supporter. so. that sucks also.

#generally i avoid making opinionated posts like this but i wanted to rant somewhere about how annoying the palworld craze is #from the perspective of an artist who didnt care until a few hours ago #also dont want to rain on someones parade for liking a problematic media or whatever #you can like cringe! i like cringe! there are plenty of things i like that have people behind it who suck #or have glaring issues #just like #dont completely dismiss artists anger as just drama or nagging! #as someone with a passion for character design this is deeply scary to me #it makes me not want to share my designs on the internet #in fear some studio will steal them and make it rich #and ill be left in squalor