New Palworld Leak Reveals Another Controversial Clone

"Palworld" has been hotly debated ever since it made its early access debut, thanks to its darker gameplay mechanics and heavy resemblance to "Pokémon." For those who have missed out on the discourse, a vocal section of the gaming community has accused the Pocketpair survival game of being a full-on clone of the "Pokémon" franchise, complete with character designs that look exceptionally familiar. Now, a dataminer has found an unused character design that has only thrown more fuel onto the fire.

According to Brian Cozzens, the dataminer who discovered this mysterious "Dark Mutant" (as it is called in the game's files), he had not intentionally gone looking for a copycat creature when he came across this one. Instead, Cozzens tells Eurogamer that he's working on building a glossary of the game's character models to share with fans. The Dark Mutant was just an unexpected bonus to his hard work. Gamers on Reddit immediately called out the fact that this Pal looks a whole lot like a palette-swapped version of Mega Mewtwo Y, an evolved form of the classic Pokémon Mewtwo that debuted in "Pokémon Y."

Since this discovery was made, "Pokémon" fans have had a fairly uniform reaction to the Dark Mutant, arguing that the similarities to Mega Mewtwo Y are a little too close to comfort. Meanwhile, "Palworld" diehards remain convinced that "Pokémon" fans are looking for a smoking gun where there isn't one. The stark divide between the two camps is pretty shocking, with one side expecting this character to be the final straw for The Pokémon Company and the other side practically begging "Pokémon" fans to chill out.

Pokémon YouTuber and historian Lewtwo was so shocked by the Dark Mutant design that they couldn't help but laugh. Posting a side-by-side image of the two creatures together, Lewtwo remarked, "hahahaha holy s*** at this Palworld design that they left in the data you cannot be serious man." Lewtwo stopped just short of calling this character a full-on ripoff, but made their feelings quite clear. The YouTuber noted that they're not wild about the original Mega Mewtwo Y design in the first place, adding, "No plagiarism accusations because all of the legal discourse has been dogs*** but this is so creatively bankrupt man. Would be nice to have Palworld's fun gameplay loop without designs that are so comparable to ones I generally vastly prefer." A number of fans have quipped that it looks like Pocketpair copied Nintendo's homework, just with a few alterations.

A number of "Palworld" fans on X (formerly Twitter) have theorized that the character might have been left out of the final game when it was decided the Dark Mutant looked too much like Mewtwo. Others have argued that the similarities aren't enough to get mad about, with fans noting comparisons between Mewtwo and other anime and gaming characters, including Frieza from "Dragon Ball Z" and Snatchmon from "Digimon." One X user joked, "Pokemon can't monopolize the weird creature industry!"

People calling him a Mewtwo Y clone when Snatchmon has been around longer

Digimon once again getting no representation SMH my head pic.twitter.com/NiTWZChrTY

— CaffeineVaccine (@VaccineCaffeine) January 29, 2024

For many of the gamers out there who are already beyond tired of the "Palworld" hype, however, the Dark Mutant appears to be a cut-and-dried case of plagiarism. "Palworld fans [are] gaslighting themselves to believe it's not a Mewtwo clone, please be real for a sec," said one X user. 

While this unnamed creature bears more than a passing resemblance to Mewtwo's Mega Evolved form, it also appears to possess some type of reality-bending creation powers, much like the all-powerful Arceus of "Pokémon" fame. Brian Cozzens discovered a Paldeck entry attached to the mysterious character model (the Paldeck being the "Palworld" equivalent of a Pokédex), which hints at just how powerful this thing is supposed to be in the game's lore: "Some say a beam from a [Dark Mutant] that has perfected its technique can tear holes into other dimensions. It's even believed that certain species of Pals were born from such phenomena." That's a pretty heavy-duty Pal. Though players are able to breed their captured Pals to create new ones (much like in the "Pokémon' franchise), the game has yet to introduce a Pal that can literally conjure them into being with its powers. 

All in all, it's ironic that Mewtwo, a Pokémon born of cloning experiments, now has a meta clone of its own. Many questions still remain about this discovery, even beyond the plagiarism accusations. For instance, players may want to know how the Dark Mutant might have originally fit into the game. Maybe the creature was originally meant to be an endgame challenge, much like Mewtwo was for Gen One "Pokémon" players. One can only imagine how the Dark Mutant could upset the game's balance if it were to be added in a future "Palworld" update as a boss or catchable Pal.