Palworld creator calls out ‘slanderous’ AI accusations, ‘death threats’ against game artists

Palworld has been the talk of the entire gaming industry since its release last week, in both the most positive and negative ways.

The survival monster catcher hybrid game has been a smash hit since becoming available to all players on Friday, Jan. 19 across PC and Xbox, selling over four million copies in just three days and nearly topping Steam’s all-time concurrent player charts.

But it hasn’t all been good news. Some of the game’s cute monsters’ uncanny resemblances to Pokémon have had players crying foul, with many saying designs were copied and others claiming they’ve been created using AI.

Takuro Mizobe, CEO of Palworld maker Pocketpair, spoke out against some of the controversy on Twitter this morning. Translated from Japanese, the post makes it clear he’s not happy.

“Currently, we are receiving slanderous comments against our artists, and we are seeing tweets that appear to be death threats,” Mizobe said, according to machine translation. “I have received a variety of opinions regarding Palworld, but all productions related to Palworld are supervised by multiple people, including myself, and I am responsible for the production. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from slandering the artists involved in Palworld.”

Fans have called out Mizobe’s past comments about AI and his enthusiasm for it, but there’s currently no proof of Palworld using AI art to create the game. Earlier this week, he said the majority of Palworld’s 100-plus characters were designed by a single “new graduate” on a team of self-proclaimed “amateurs.”

Regardless of the controversies, Palworld continues to blow up on Steam. On Jan. 22, the game reached over 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam alone and has shown no signs of slowing its momentum as players everywhere continue to purchase the game and hop into the open world.