Whether you think this game has arrived out of the blue, or was an obvious hit, one thing is clear; It bears a lot of similarity to an existing game franchise you may have encountered, namely Pokémon. We won’t go into detail about potential similarities; suffice to say that enough significant likeness exists in the base games to require clarification when it comes to modding the game.
We do think that adding Pokémon content to Palworld is a very cool idea and we understand why people would want such a thing. However, we're not comfortable hosting this content at Nexus Mods.
As you may know, Nintendo (who jointly own the Pokémon franchise) have a consistent record of mercilessly submitting legal challenges, DMCAs and takedowns against fan-made content.
Given Palworld's similarity to the Pokémon franchise as a base game, hosting content that adds Pokémon copyrighted characters or assets into the game is almost certainly going to put us at risk of legal action. Palworld content that is uploaded to Nexus Mods and is considered to have Pokémon-derived characters or assets will be taken down. Our normal moderation policies will apply.
We don’t think it's worth the risk to allow this content to be shared in our community. At best we would have to deal with the headache of legal threats from Nintendo and at worst they may seek to take action against us and the uploaders of the mods directly.
There are many creative opportunities to explore mods for this game that add to the world and gameplay, but do not infringe on existing IP so obviously. You are encouraged to explore these modding directions freely.
We are looking to support Palworld modding in any way that we can and we have already released Vortex mod manager support for Palworld. We also encourage you to visit us in our Palworld modding forums.
All of us here at Nexus Mods are really excited to see what the PalWorld modding community comes up with.
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A moderator has closed this comment topic for the time beingThis is quite a unique situation, being incredibly high profile and involving two very similar IPs. This is why we addressed it specifically. We have a well established content takedown process if IP owners want to challenge any piece of content on the site.
In addition, please don't directly call out modders or initiate mod witchhunts in the comments here.
This recent Pokémon Company release further validates our position on this:
https://corporate.pokemon.co.jp/media/news/detail/335.html
"We stress that no one should be prosecuted for making Pokémon mods, but please don't do it on our site, we'll get your family if you do! Take care."
No pun Nintendo.
This would probably be why its so far only been DMCA's towards ToastedShoes clips/videos of the mod. Also to note, it was never available and is/was a private mod with the intention to release it.
I feel like you don't know what hypocrisy means. It would be hypocritical if their reason for removing it was on moral ground, but since it's purely based on a cost benefit analysis, there can't really be hypocrisy unless you're gonna argue that "they don't actually care about cost/benefit". If they haven't removed previous mods for other games, it's because there was little risk. Now there is.
On the other side, I also have some respect for Nintendo, sure they are guilty of ripping off other things (show me a corporation that hasn't), but atleast they also do the leg work to try and protect the work their developers have made, even though they come across as total d****. Being a creative, it crushes one's soul when someone steals your hardwork (happened several times to me over the years), and making money off of it, not saying that is what Palworld has done, but in general, it really kills your creative spirit.
Most will just turn a blind eye to copyright infringement (among other things), few really truly understand, let alone appreciate the amount of work that goes into something that most just see the end result of, and thinks, "pfft, thats so simple" or whatever.
I don't get on board with the hate trains with no CONCRETE proof. You can't deny inspiration / similarities but it's not my job to witch hunt gaming companies.
Utter nonsense made up problems by people who are bored with their life.
Apparently you have. The allegations for that have been proven wrong. As the person who said them and had the pictures literally said they made it all up and crunch down the assets to make them look to be almost 1:1