‘Palworld’ Modders Are Already Living In Fear of Nintendo's Legal Team

Palworld is the first big hit video game of 2024. Like all good PC games with a thriving community, mods for Palworld are coming in. But in Palworld’s modding scene, there’s one topic that’s quickly becoming taboo: Pokémon.

The game has only been out a few days, selling over 5 million copies and sparking several interrelated controversies, and mods that make it look more like Pokémon are already floating around. The response from Palworld’s modest modding community has been to avoid the subject entirely, lest they attract the aggressively litigious eyes of Pokémon parent company Nintendo. One major repository for mods, Nexusworld, appears to be proactively removing pages that reference Pokémon mods for Palworld. 

Frequently described  as “Pokémon with guns,” Palworld is never beating the allegations that it riffed on Nintendo’s beloved franchise even if it has the trappings of an open-world survival game rather than a true Pokémon-style RPG. It took no time at all for modders to churn out a version of the game that replaces the main character with Ash Ketchum and several of the Pals with actual Pokémon. YouTuber ToastedShoes posted a video of the mod on X, only for Nintendo to hit him with a DMCA takedown.

“Nintendo has come for, please leave me in your thoughts and prayers,” ToastedShoes said in a follow up Tweet. Undeterred, ToastedShoes posted a 16-minute video of himself playing Palworld with the mods installed on YouTube.

“Is that going to stop me, with Nintendo coming for my family?” ToastedShoes said in the YouTube video. “No it will not. Pray for my family, we’re doing Pokémon in Palworld.”

ToastedShoes, whose real name is Joe Randle, has more than 700,000 subscribers on YouTube. His most popular videos involve him playing through popular video games using mods that make out of universe characters appear. In one video, he paid a guy to voice Peter Griffin while he played through Halo as the Family Guy. In another, he plays through God of War with Kratos and Atreus replaced by Homer and Bart from The Simpsons. He typically shares the mods he uses with his community, either through Patreon or on Discord.

That may not be happening with the Palworld Pokémon mod, though. “I’ve been getting a large influx of people asking where they can get the mod etc,” ToasteShoes said on his Discord. “We want to release it for free to everyone, however due to Nintendo sending a DMCA over the last tweet we want to tread lightly for the time being. We don’t want a lawsuit but I want to give you all a chance to play it for yourselves. I will keep you all posted on its progress and release. If the video gets tricked though it could very much be it. All depends on Nintendo.”

Update 1/124/24: After the publication of this piece, Nintendo hit ToastedShoes with a DMCA takedown for the YouTube video. The rest of the story follows along with some additional words from ToastedShoes and Nexus Mods. “Since the Twitter DMCA and now my YouTube video being blocked there are no further plans to produce content on the mod.”

Randle told Motherboard that Nintendo hasn’t reached out beyond the DMCAs. “Since the Twitter DMCA and now my YouTube video being blocked there are no further plans to produce content on the mod.”

Randle has a team of modders who craft the experience for him so he can go into the game blind to make videos. “With Nintendo watching me however the modders this time around have opted in to remain anonymous,” he said.

His team had an early copy of Palworld and were able to get 26 Pokémon into the game before they stopped work. The plan was to release it to his community, but—on the advice of legal counsel—he won’t be dong that now. “It sucks cause I really want to share them with the gaming community and modding scene but I don't think the risk is worth it. We are however working on another mod pack which will be similar which is all I can say for now,” he said.

In other modding spaces on the internet, mentioning Pokémon mods for Palworld is restricted and access to the files is absent. A mod that put Ash into Palworld was up on Nexus Mods was up briefly, but has been pulled with a message saying it’s “under moderation review.” A thread on the Nexus Mods forum suggesting the use of Pokémon assets in Palworld has also been removed.

“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,” the company told Motherboard in an email, citing Nintendo’s “merciless” legal history.

“Given Palworld's similarity to the Pokémon franchise as a base game, hosting content that adds copyrighted characters or assets into the game is almost certainly going to put us at risk of legal action. 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 DMCA/legal threats from Nintendo and at worst they may seek to take action against us and uploaders of the mods directly.”

The Discord server where Palworld modders have gathered is also being careful, banning any discussion of the Pokémon mod: 

Nintendo is a famously litigious company, and Palworld looks a lot like Pokémon to begin with so the paranoia is probably warranted. “This looks like the usual ripoff nonsense that I would see a thousand times a year when I was Chief Legal Officer of Pokémon,” Don McGowan, who held the role from 2008 to 2020, told games journalist Stephen Totilo. “I’m just surprised it got this far.”

Pokémon-themed mods for other games have long persisted without controversy. You can get Pokeballs in Fallout 4 and even a fully voiced Pickachu in Skyrim. This list of Stardew Valley mods that use Pokémon-style art assets is too numerous to list. You can even use Blastoise as a handcannon in Resident Evil 4. Some of these mods have been up for years with no ire from Nintendo. Palworld’s breakout success might just put more of a target on its back, however.

Update 1/24/24: This story has been updated with additional comments from Nexus Mods and ToastedShoes.