Did the Palworld devs copy Hollow Knight with Never Grave: The Witch and The Curse?

hello there fellow fans of hollow night as well as any Gamers curious about this particular subject that's been a rather Hot Topic for the past week today we're going to be discussing whether the Powell devs copied Hollow Knight with their upcoming title never grave the witch and the curse I will be splitting this video into chapters so you can skip the summaries if you've already done your own research into all these games right so first of all what the heck is never grave good question never grave the witch and the curse is an upcoming 2D Metroid Vania which incorporates roguelike and platformer mechanics as well as other fun features like multiplayer support enemy possession and Base building the story follows a witchy protagonist battling through a series of dungeons with the help of her cursed hat never grave was initially announced last year along with an announcement trailer on the 20th of May now when I first started writing this script the game was listed as being developed by pocket pair but on the 25th of January the game's developer was updated on Steam from pocket pair to front side 180 Studios a studio that seems to have no online presence even if you click front side 180 on the store Page you'll be linked back to pocket pair they also added a free demo to steam on the same day that I'll be playing throughout this video like pocket pairs other games never grave will also be released into Early Access First the release date hasn't yet been confirmed but it's currently planned for quarter 1 2024 speaking of pocket pairs other games the reason this game is suddenly in the spotlight is because of power world's recent success I think it's worthwhile to cover at least a few of the allegations surrounding power world right now as it serves as important context for the never grave discussion so just in case you've been living under a rock this month power is an open world survival game where you can hunt adorable Pals capture them and put them to work similar to slave labor on a factory-like production line to produce tools and weapons since release the game has done incredibly well far better than anyone expected they sold 8 million copies on Steam in less than 6 days which is insane considering the game is also on Game Pass and this doesn't include those figures it reached number two on the list of highest all-time Peak players on Steam with a peak of 2,997 44 concurrent players second only to pubg and this is all even more impressive for game that launched into Early Access yes that's right power world is an early access game power world was initially announced back in 2021 along with a trailer that immediately earned itself the nickname Pokémon with guns due to the limited Insight we were offered through the gameplay Clips featured in that trailer after playing the game it's clear that the game buts a uniquely satirical spin on what you'd expect to see in popular games of the same genre which is of course never going to be everyone's cup of tea in addition to the whole slave labor thing you could also engage in fun activities like catching human enemies to or even cannibalize and eradicate factions like the free pal Alliance whose objectives revolve around liberating Pals from fascist rule leaving you the player questioning whether perhaps maybe you are one of the bad guys and spoilers you're probably one of the bad guys Peter also known as the people for the ethical treatment of animals even issued an official statement because of their concerns about in-game animal cruelty but I think we can ignore that given Peter have one of the largest kill shelters in America and they euthanize the majority of animals they take into custody and that's just us barely scratching the surface of problematic things Peter has done but this isn't a Peter video the more legitimate criticism I want to focus on are the copying allegations starting with the obvious First Choice Pokémon despite the fan dub nickname Pokémon with guns pal world is not a Pokémon game there are certain similarities that I think we need to remember aren't unique to Pokémon like Monster hunting catching breeding and fighting there's a pokedex like system for recording powers that you've seen and caught a pal storage system that seems to be heavily inspired by the PCS in Pokémon games and pal spheres could seem Maybe a bit too close to pokeballs none of these things are quite as damning as the blatant Pokémon design ripoffs that exist as pal in the game keep in mind that Pokémon has had a fair few of its own accusations of copying monster designs over the years and many of theirs are inspired by real world animals so similarities should be expected but some of these are truly ridiculous at what point does it switch from inspiration and parody to just straight up plagiarism regardless of your opinion whether it's okay to steal from Big corporations we're still talking about the work of individual artists here in this day and age it feels like the gaming industry is increasingly leaning towards the use of generative AI to replace artists writers voice actors and whoever else they can get away with we should not be setting a precedent that is okay to steal from artists if they're employed by a rich Corp like the Pokémon company like many of the people sharing their outrage on social media right now I am not an expert in 3D modeling but I'll link a video in the description from someone called go go who is a technical animator who rigs 3D models for a living and they go into a lot more detail about the topic to summarize quickly the similarities are concerning but they can't explicitly claim that the models have been copied there was also a viral thread floating around comparing power world and Pokémon models where the original poster apparently admitted to fabricating their results starting yet another online Witch Hunt for anyone who cares to share their opinion in the power world discourse Bubble look we don't need to go to these lengths it's pretty damn obvious which pows are inspired by which Pokémon designs and I don't think we need to fight each other about that the good news is we don't have to the Pokemon company recently put out their own statement on the matter not mentioning powerwell by name but instead referencing a another company's game released in January 2024 along with their intent to carry out an investigation themselves however this statement was shared shortly after a tweet went viral for teasing a Pokémon mod for power weld that video advertising the mod was quickly taken down by the copyright owner which I presume was the Pokémon company but if I recall correctly it was basically just powerweld with Pokémon models substituted in I'm not sure why they thought they would get away with that but either way it's not clear whether the statement had been planned before this or whether this was just the final straw for them to break their silence representatives from Nexus mods have already said that they won't be hosting any Pokémon mods for power world because they don't want to fill the raft of the Pokémon company's team of lawyers and I'm sure we'll all know soon enough if the Pokémon company come up with anything concrete to use against Power Wells remember this game has been around for a long time now the trailer was a while ago they had all this time to do something if they could have they would have then on the other side pocket pair CEO takura Mobi took to Twitter to ask everyone to stop sending slanderous comments or threats towards their artists he also confirmed in an interview with automatic media that they have cleared legal reviews so far and have no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies howal has also been accused of using generative AI for their designs and I don't want to give those allegations too much attention in this video for four reasons reason number one there is nothing to support the argument that power world uses AI art other than random people on the internet saying they feel like they have it is true that pocket pair have another game that does heavily rely on AI art like that's the whole concept of the game and their CEO has indeed said some rather controversial things about originality but we'll discuss that later in the video and it's not really enough to legitimize the accusation reason number two AI generated Arts come very far in recent years but not far enough to produce instant production ready in game models we even saw many of the pals back in the 2021 trailer back when AI was far less sophisticated reason number three you must tell steam if you've used AI to develop your game so they can add the relevant disclosure on your store Page and before you say yeah but they could just lie about it yeah they they can however steam users can report games if they believe AI has been used and steam will investigate properly on our behalf number four and the most important reason of all even if the designs were born from generative AI my opinion doesn't change art theft is art theft no matter how you look at it I've not yet seen any solid evidence that confirms the use of AI art so I don't understand those who are coopting genuine valid criticism to push an anti- aai agenda it really only weakens the argument when you dilute it with these baseless claims we don't need to talk about potential AI art usage based on nothing when it's clear there's so many suspect designs that they need to answer for right in front of our eyes anyway Pokémon isn't the only game that may have inspired power world as I mentioned before power world is not a Pokémon game it clearly lacks many of the common characteristics that we've seen in the majority of Pokémon titles since the '90s including but not limited to Evolutions trading term-based combat PVP etc etc power world is a survival game taking parts of popular titles like Ark rust valheim and Conan Exiles and combining them with exploration and traversal mechanics that we've seen in The Legend of Zelda breath of the wild then there's the whole Resource Management side of things that makes me feel like I'm either back working as a corporate drone as a project manager or playing a very watered down setus Factory I also wanted to mention that the whole development story behind power world seemed absolutely hilarious they had a relatively small budget and a team who didn't have any experience developing shooters or even know some of the most basic Dev terms and then they wanted someone with experience developing Shooters on their team which they had trouble finding in Japan until they bumped into a gun nut and self-taught Dev at a convenience store it feels like a comedy movie in the making okay I've spent far too long talking about power world so let me quickly touch on craftopia and AI art impostor before we go back to never grave craftopia is another pocket pair Survival game currently in Early Access that divided public opinion in the past due to its similarities with breath of the wild I'll admit I've not played craftopia or breath of the wild so instead I've done an extensive review of what the those who've actually played them have said and from that I've learned that the art style is similar and there's a few modern zelda-esque mechanics present but then it brings in the survival elements in comparisons switch over to rust and Minecraft just like power W it seems to be an amalgamation of different games and it doesn't seem like they got in any legal trouble before either AI art impostor is yet another Early Access game developed by pocket pair but it's very different to the others this one's more of a party game that you can play with friends where you write commands to generate AI images that fall under a given theme except one of you as an imposter who doesn't know what the theme is if you guess the theme as the impostor you win and if players vote the right person as the impostor they win I can't claim to know which model it uses to generate those images and while there are models that have learned to generate images from a pool of non stolen or copyrighted artworks we can't claim that that's the case here cuz we we'll never know for sure even if the game is entirely designed around AI we don't know how these assets are being produced my assumption would be that they're using an unethical generative AI model but that's only based on my understanding of cost and availability either way the most important takeaway here is that pocket pair are clearly not shy about stating they use AI when they do use it okay back to never grave and the arguments in favor of copying Hollow Knight let's look at some of the similarities first of all there's the fact that it's a Metroid Vania weak but bear with me a moment the goal of the game seems to be to descend to the lowest levels in a similar vein to your descent in Hall Nest the art style including Hollow night signature lifeblood blue hue and a clear resemblance with of certain decorative assets honestly some of the screenshots that I've seen I take off my glasses and that's just Hollow night you know the music especially on the title screen feels very Hollow nesque obviously not quite as great as our Christopher Lin could produce there's many combat similarities but I do want to mention that while the witch's slash looks eerily similar to the knight's nail I don't think we can really condemn them for that cuz it's pretty basic and common some of the enemies look Hollow Knight inspired including this one that looks like the lower half of a flukeman the tram system yeah that one's pretty bad locked in combat rooms which are incredibly common in Rogue likes anyway the path of pain kind of area also fairly common in Platformers we even saw it again recently in the latest Prince of Persia and then there's benches tons of benches okay I'm just joking on that last one I'm not going to lie most of these are pretty weak on their own and are only strengthened by the fact pocket pairs Mo across the board seems to be to create games that are heavily inspired by other popular games the other Factor worth mentioning that might suggest copying is pocket pair SE eo's personal mantra for designing games let me provide a translated quote from him taken from his interview with wi Japan in 2022 I've always loved Nintendo games and that hasn't changed I also deeply respect them however when it comes to making games Nintendo has a strong philosophy of creating new and unique games with high quality on the other hand I have a deep rooted desire for my work to be enjoyed by as many people as possible and to that end if there are good ideas in the world I pick them up and I don't necessarily have to be particular about originality I'm thinking about it I want to make it more casually I think it would be a good idea to create things in a way that just jumps on what is trendy and I think I speak for everyone that has watched this video up to this point when I say well that was Bloody obvious but thank you for coming right out and saying it the question then shifts from did they copy Hollow Knight to to what extent and whether the particular level of inspiration seen in this game is actually okay much like power world isn't a Pokémon game and craftopia isn't breath of the wild it seems never grave has a lot of interesting mechanics thrown in that indicate it's probably not a hollow night game starting with the elements that are absent from Hollow night when you die at never grave you wake up back at that church just below the village where you can strengthen up before making your next attempt I admitted mentioning The Village at the top in the similari segment because the village is nothing like dirt mouth and that's because it's your job to clear the rubble at the village and rebuild it you can build facilities cultivate crops produce food and Potions it actually looks very cute and correct me if I'm wrong but there's not that many Metras with Base building like this there's quite a few that let you have a house to display trophies and col Collectibles I think the second ay lets you upgrade a home hub style area and apparently Castlevania Harmony of dissonance has a quest where you can collect furniture and decorate a room in the castle maybe there are more that I don't even know about so do let me know in the comments multiplayer never grave has native multiplayer for up to four players and that's going to be from release on day one also the never grave dungeons are procedurally generated which we know isn't the case for hollow Knight and of course there are unique abilities and the abilities of enemies that you can possess using your curve witch's hat and that's all in addition to the differences and art styles that I've not even called out yet every single accusation that I've seen on social media of people calling never grave a hollow night clone has shared the same screenshots with the blue or green highlights while I agree that there are design similarities that are certainly Hollow night inspired I don't think we can call every Metroid Vania that uses this color palette a clone there are many other areas that feature in the trailer and in the demo that I'm not needing to take a double take to see that it's not Hollow night this isn't the first first time a game has been accused of copying Hollow KN look at Haiku the robot bow Crow sworn deviator enderes gleam light the list goes on with some of these having a far stronger case for being a copycat than never grave where is the line for the acceptable amount of inspiration that you're allowed to take from one of the best Metroid vanas to ever exist we know team Cherry have been supportive of some of these titles in the past and I certainly don't want to get annoyed on their behalf especially for a game that plays so differently to hollow Knight their game I want to end this section by acknowledging that there may well be a lot more that we don't know about in this game it's not fully released yet and I'm sure I'll make an update video If there's more to discuss but in a case like this there's always going to be unknowns so back to the main question do I think the devs copied Hollow Knight yes and no I think it's pretty likely that they saw Hollow Knight success thought hey I want a piece of that and that's where never grave may have started but it's not a hollow Knight clone it's a very very different game game mechanics and how they feel are not copyrightable in most instances is and even if they were I don't think there's a strong enough case here for team Cherry if they did want to pursue this further pocket pair do exhibit a clear trend of taking pieces of other popular games or series and putting them together to create something new competition is healthy and very good for consumers but blatantly ripping off another game especially when it does well discourages Innovation a certain level of inspiration is okay we wouldn't have games like Hollow night starw Valley or even God a war otherwise but straight up ripping off someone else's art is not I do genuinely think that never grave has only become a discussion Point recently as a snap judgment from those who just hate power world and as I've covered before there is legitimate criticism that pocket pair should address with regards to the art theft allegations annoyingly this would have all been avoided if they just designed powers that Beed less resemblance to individual Pokémon because as I keep saying it's not a Pokémon game the unique offering that power world brings to the table is the combination of popular elements that Gamers clearly enjoy but this is a video about never grave not power world never grave seems like another Frankenstein pocket pair game that resembles many popular titles and it offers a unique experience you wouldn't get from any of those that it took inspiration from alone it's not particularly Innovative in its own right but it's certainly an interesting recipe that I'll be keeping my eye on however after playing the demo and then going back to my script right now uh it doesn't play well on my PC it doesn't run smoothly I don't know if you can see that in the video I'm hoping that that gets either fixed before it releases or I don't know maybe it's something on my PC I'll try another device the other question on my mind is why do they have so many of these games in Early Access I don't think it's particularly common to have multiple games in Early Access at once especially for a company as small as pocket pair maybe that will be a good topic for another video and if you've made it this far thank you for watching and I will see you in the next one

Channel: Cadaea

Views: 10,588

Keywords: palworld, palworld gameplay, palworld discourse, palworld controversy, Never Grave, Hollow Knight, Hollow Knight Silksong, Silksong, palworld trailer, palworld review, palworld copy, PocketPair, pocketpair ceo, hollow knight clone, hollow knight news, silksong news, Silksong 2024, Team Cherry, Metroidvania, did Never Grave copy hollow knight, did pocketpair copy hollowknight, palworld drama, palworld drama explained, never grave the witch and the curse gameplay

Id: rPs4VWNEtG8

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 29 2024