A Steam game arriving under a cloud of plagiarism allegations has managed something remarkable: it copied not one, but three major gaming franchises in a single trailer. Pickmon, developed by PocketGame and published by NETWORKGO, combines creature-collecting mechanics from Pokemon with survival-crafting gameplay from Palworld, all wrapped in visual language that lifts directly from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The resemblances are not subtle. In its Steam reveal, PocketGame's first-ever non-mobile title described itself as a "multiplayer open-world survival crafter" where players team up with their Pickmon to "fight, farm, and build industrial empires while thwarting a shadowy organization's plot." Pickmon's Steam description is almost identical to Palworld's description, which suggests either inspiration so direct it borders on plagiarism or a development team that made no effort to hide its sources.
The visual language tells much the same story. As the trailer unfolds, a blonde player-character who looks suspiciously like Link jumps off a cliff holding onto a glider, flying over a landscape that looks remarkably similar to The Great Plateau starting area in Breath of the Wild. The trailer's soundtrack follows a similar pattern. Early footage features piano music that echoes composer Manaka Kataoka's work on Zelda without reaching the sophistication of the original.
Developer PocketGame's logo appears on screen as the knock-off Zelda music kicks off. Palworld is developed by Pocketpair. PocketGame appears to have taken inspiration from Pocketpair's studio name. That naming choice signals either casual indifference to trademark concerns or something closer to deliberate mockery.
Stolen Designs, Borrowed and Otherwise
The creature designs present an even sharper problem. The orange monster in Pickmon's keyart looks like someone combined Pokemon's Charizard with Palworld's Quivern. In the same shot, a monster bears striking resemblance to Meganium, and the blue and black creature may as well just be Lucario. Later in the trailer, the player fights a monster that looks a lot like Ceruledge. These are not homages or inspired-by takes. They are near-identical reproductions.
More troubling still, multiple independent fan artists have come forward claiming the game uses their designs without permission or credit. An artist known as El.psy.fake alleged that Pickmon lifted designs from fan artists including their Mega Meganium evolution, saying "They didn't even try to change something and make it a bit less obvious." Fellow artist @pokejayjay confirmed a separate theft on X, saying it's their fan design for Mega Ceruledge stolen, and neither artist had been credited or contacted.
The fan art theft adds a dimension the Nintendo versus Palworld lawsuit never quite reached. Palworld's Pocketpair, despite facing legal action from The Pokemon Company, maintained some distance from outright design replication and has worked to distinguish its game through original systems and mechanics. Pickmon appears to have skipped that step entirely.
A Deliberate Play with Fire
The developer's name, PocketGame, strikes many as a deliberate nod to Palworld's developer Pocketpair, and the game's use of cards to capture creatures rather than balls reads to critics as a transparent workaround of the monster-capturing patent at the centre of Nintendo's ongoing lawsuit against Palworld. If true, that would suggest PocketGame paid close attention to Nintendo's legal strategy against Pocketpair and reverse-engineered a design specifically intended to slip past the same objections.
PocketGame's only title on Steam is Pickmon itself. Publisher NetworkGo developed Hainya World in 2023, which took obvious inspiration from existing games like Maple Story and Minecraft. The track record suggests a studio with little concern for originality and no investment in building long-term reputation.
Pickmon is requesting that streamers and content creators participate in an early access "experience" before the game goes into public early access in 2027. That timeline is telling. A 2027 release date provides runway before legal action might take effect, and early influencer coverage could build momentum before the inevitable litigation arrives.
The Copyright Question
Nintendo's position on creature design plagiarism remains unclear. The Pokemon Company has been engaged in a legal battle with Palworld studio Pocketpair for months, not over its monster designs but its mechanics. Using balls to capture creatures is something that can only happen in Pokemon games, apparently, which might be why Pickmon's monsters are caught using cards.
The one thing Pokemon didn't come after Palworld for was its designs. The legal grey area in that department is far more blurry, which might mean Pickmon can get away with some of its monsters looking so similar to the ones you might find in Pokemon and Palworld. That murkiness may be why PocketGame pursued this strategy at all. Design copyright law is genuinely ambiguous in ways that mechanical patents are not.
The fan art theft, however, presents a cleaner legal problem. Independent artists hold clear copyright over their original work, and using those designs without permission or attribution is straightforward infringement.
As of March 2026, neither Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, nor Pocketpair has announced any legal action against Pickmon or its developers. Given how recently the trailer emerged, responses from any of those parties are yet to come. That absence speaks to timing rather than inaction. Nintendo's litigation strategy with Palworld is already slow-moving; it will likely take weeks or months before any formal response to Pickmon materialises.
What It Means
Pickmon represents a new kind of problem for IP holders and the industry itself. Palworld was genuinely inspired by Pokemon whilst attempting to build something original. It faced lawsuits, yes, but the game proved successful enough to warrant serious development investment and adjustments to comply with legal concerns. That narrative of innovation amid legal challenge feels manageable.
Pickmon is something else: a trailer released to streaming, a developer with no track record, borrowed assets from multiple sources, stolen fan work, a name that echoes a competitor, and a release date distant enough to create plausible deniability. It reads less like a game and more like a test of how much copying the legal system can actually stop.
For fans and creators, the message is simpler and bleaker. Fan artists now face the additional indignity of watching their work lifted without credit, not by major publishers but by indie studios betting that the sheer volume of intellectual property infringement will create legal confusion and delay. The gaming industry has always borrowed heavily from itself, but the speed and shamelessness with which Pickmon mixes source material suggests a boundary has shifted. Whether courts or copyright enforcement will push back remains an open question.