Nintendo Shoots Down Fan Mod That Puts POKÉMON Creatures Into PALWORLD

Opinions vary on the all-new Palworld, which has already sold millions of copies for Xbox and PC in just a few days. Some think it’s a fun, adult-oriented take on an iconic game. Others (especially executives at Nintendo) consider it nothing more than a blatant ripoff that turns a celebration of collecting, love, and friendship into a shooter that promotes gun violence and hard labor. Either/or! But no matter how you feel about Pocket Pair’s open-world adventure no one can deny it’s obviously based on Pokémon. Many of Palworld‘s creatures are clearly off-brand versions of the ones found in the Battle Arena. What would it be like to actually see the originals engage in bloody combat, though? A fan mod that puts actual Pokémon in Palworld will let you see, but you probably won’t get to learn what it’s like firsthand.

Online creator and YouTuber Toasted Shoes gave fans of fictional animals fighting one another the crossover they wanted by putting actual Pokémon into Palworld. His modification replaces Palworld‘s player character with Ash Ketchum, who then runs around the open-world map encountering the very same creatures he knows from his own game.

There are lots of familiar faces for Ash to find in this mashup world of Pals. As Twitter user Cecilia Fae documented, there are many Pokémon knockoffs in Pocket Pair’s survival game. Some are really direct, while others are only slightly less obvious.

The key word in many of these is “slightly.”

Many will consider this just a fun fan mod. Nintendo disagrees! The company enforced a copyright claim on the original tweet sharing the video. That could keep the modification from ever reaching gamers despite its creator’s desire to release it for free. Because while Toasted Shoes reposted the video to YouTube, he also told IGN he will fully comply with any future copyright requests from Nintendo. You know, the global company who can afford the best attorneys around. Yeah, that Nintendo.