#mentions of really dark stuff under the cut but it is nessisary to explain why generative ai models are unethical to financially support

[ultravioart]

The hangyu fan design stealing was disproven, but this Mega Delphox design that predates Palworld absolutely was lifted from a fandesign to make the Pal Wixen.

I will not be reposting the artists fan design, please click the link and give eyes/credit to the original fanartist!

Pyroaura98/EtherealHaze made this Mega Delphox fan design art prior to 2014, but this post was made in 2014. Either way it predates Palworld (announced 2021).

And this is the Pal design Wixen

Many fan made megas for Delphox include a hat, but Wixen is obviously taking from the design EtherealHaze made because:

-The red hair strands flow into the red hat, a very unique/distinct design element of the EtherealHaze's fan design.

-The red hat incorporates the ears into it as red, just like EtherealHaze's design (most other fan designs for mega delphox leave the ears seperate and a different color)

-The orange triangle chest fur.

-The white paws INSIDE the 3d red sleeve holes, just like EtherealHaze's design.

And for reference, this the official Pokemon Delphox: note no 3d sleeve holes and black paws.

It is unethical for larger companies like Pocketpair to use designs from smaller artists without consent and compensation.

TemTem received legal permission for the viral fakemon platypus line from the original artist.

Palworld did not receive legal permission for the fanmade Mega Delphox design.

Just to make it clear, Pokemon themselves have made parody designs of other series monsters, and in the monster taming genre MANY games parody eachother, so I don't think Palworld parodying official Pokemon is inherently bad. It also is pretty much impossible to financially damage Pokemon with parody as Pokemon is one of the richest IPs in the world.

However, Palworld making parody of small artist's fanmon designs without consent and compensation is not ethical.

Pocketpair is a larger company taking from someone who cannot legally fight back. Pokemon can sue Palworld if it really is an issue for Pokemon, but EtherealHaze cannot do so with the same ease because good lawyers are extremely expensive, and the legal battle can be very time consuming and stressful for just one person.

TDLR; This post is meant to inform consumers about the products, I am not defending Pokemon nor Palworld nor TemTem, only aiming to inform about practices I feel are unjust. Palworld devs lifting from fan made fakemon without legal consent and compensation is unethical. If you still wish to play Palworld, please consider pirating Palworld instead of purchasing/playing online (release sales and online player numbers are used to get investors for the company/game).

Additional issues with Pocketpair's behavior towards AI and NFTs:

Pocketpair has previously published a party game that hosts an unethical generative ai art model. And no you are not 'spotting the ai art vs hand drawn art'-- that is disinformation.

In this party game every player during a round uses ai to generate images based on a given theme, except one imposter player that has to guess the theme. Then the group tries to guess which ai image was created with the imposter prompt. This game profits off of hosting an unethical generative ai image model.

Why is this generative ai model unethical?

Generative ai image models like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, etc, are trained on open web data (scrubbing the entire internet, uses private info/copyright/NSFL content -- article linked discussing what kind of illegal NSFL content Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc has been trained on. Images of warcrimes also are used in such datasets.)

This is absolutely unacceptable and should not be supported. Datasets can absolutely be made without illegal content, truely twisted people were unwilling to make ethical datasets with legal free to use images.

Also in general, big generative ai model dev (be it text, image, etc) is notorious for abusing workers. It often exposes grossly underpaid employees to traumatic materials with no proper mental health care. Link. You can read many articles about this issue online. For reference, government intelligence workers have therapy for the traumatic content they view, so even if its ai generated, constant exposure to traumatic content is not to be taken lightly. Workers are real people.

Additionally, Pocketpair social medias have flirted with NFTs, and the CEO of Pocketpair is a founder of a cryptocurrency company called Coincheck. NFTs are scams (you purchase the receipt, not the actual item, and all NFTs loose monetary value) and if that wasn't bad enough, NFTs, Crypto, and in general Blockchain infrastructure waste a shiton of resources via proof-of-work processing, you might as well be pissing oil into the ocean. Link. That is not ethical.

It does not appear that the game Palworld itself uses unethical ai, nor has it stolen actual pokemon 3d model topology, BUT the EtherealHaze fakemon design has been lifted from without legal consent, which is enough for me to drop the game. Furthermore, I cannot trust Pocketpair as a company to not introduce unethical ai and NFTs into Palworld in the future, due to the company's past behavior.

Whether you continue to play Palworld is up to you, but as I said before, please consider pirating the game instead of purchasing or playing online, since the stats can be used to get investors for the Pocketpair company/Palworld game.