 Well folks, it's time we finally talk about Pal World. And look, it's been taken the internet over by storm, 8 million, 9 million, maybe 10 million in sales by now. I don't know, I don't really keep up to date on it because look, Pal World isn't a game that's currently on a Nintendo platform. It is a third party indie studio game that released on Xbox, which is a bit rough on Xbox and obviously on PC. And maybe there was ambitions of it eventually going to PlayStation 5 and maybe Nintendo Switch 2 someday. I know that the main person behind the studio has talked about how they wouldn't mind bringing it to Nintendo Switch 2 someday or whatever. But here's the thing. We're not talking about Pal World because of its mega success and why people might want this to come to a future Nintendo platform. Instead, we're talking about it today because there's been quite a lot of internet controversies around this game. A lot of it being based on the fact that there's a ton of specific Pokemon fans that like to infer that Pal World has actually stolen art assets in it from Pokemon. Now, look, again, fans making these claims wasn't enough for us to do anything more than talk about this on live streams. And if you see my live streams, you kinda know my general thoughts on this, but I'm gonna give you guys thoughts on the idea of AI-generated art controversy as a controversial as that topic might be. We'll split this into some topics because the first thing we need to get into and really the real reason this while video exists is because the Pokemon Company has now released a statement about Pal World and it sounds like the Pokemon Company is considering taking legal action against the game. We're gonna talk about why that is, but let's dive into this article over on Nintendo Life. So it says the Pokemon Company releases official statement about Pal World. We'll go down here right to the statement and it says inquiries regarding other company's games. We have received many inquiries regarding another company's game released in January, 2024. Notice how they won't mention what the game is by name. They're trying not to give it too much marketing here. We have not granted any permission for the use of Pokemon intellectual property or assets in that game. We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokemon. We will continue to cherish and nurture each and every Pokemon and its world and work to bring the world together through Pokemon in the future. Now, Pokemon obviously gets quite a lot of hate online for mostly deserved reasons based on game quality and bugs and all of that. And we actually have a bit of a story on that. We're gonna cover a little bit later in here, but what I wanna really focus in on here is this idea of Pokemon Company going after Pal World. Why would they go after Pal World? Well, I noted that there are some fans that have pointed out that it looks like certain art assets from Pokemon potentially were stolen to put into Pal World character designs. Now, here's the thing. When we're talking about the pals which are like their version of Pokemon, yes, there is some similarities. We can't deny that there aren't some similarities between some of the pals and some of the Pokemon. But similarities literally do not mean that it's directly plagiarism and that they literally are stealing assets and it's not derivative enough under the letter of the law. It's quite fascinating. The interesting part here as well is that both of these companies, the people who made Pal World and Pokemon are Japanese entities. And if you did not know, there actually is no such thing as fair use in Japan. It does not exist. They do not have fair use laws in Japan. So since this is a local Japanese company versus a local Japanese company, this could actually make things a bit more complicated. In the legal process, because any argument for fair use won't exist in Japan. Now, again, that doesn't make it illegal. There's going to be other considerations involved. Now, I've said this entire time, whether it was on social media or in live streams, that for us fans, this isn't really a concern. This is if the Pokemon company thinks there's anything wrongfully at play here, they will take care of it. And it looks like, hey, they're at least looking into it. They're investigating it and they're going to see if there's anything they think they need to do legally to protect their IP. Now, again, we don't know that anything needs to be done. I am not a lawyer. I am not somebody who knows if something is derivative enough to not be a copy. I gotta remember as well, a lot of Pokemon have actually got an inspiration from Dragon Quest monsters in the past. And people don't really yell at Pokemon about that. Although I will say it does appear a little bit more blatant. Like exact facial features appearing on certain Pokemon. Also, some Pokemon fans have gone out there and tried to make it sound worse than it is. Talking about the proportion sizes are the exact same. It turns out they faked it. They wanted to make the measures look the same to make the argument worse. And we don't need any of that crap. I also wanna know that there has been a number of fans that have gone after the artist. They have gone to the credits of the game, found the artist, found their social media profiles and have vehemently attacked the artists of the game. I wanna say that that's never okay. All right, this is a legal issue. This is not an issue for us fans to take it to our own hands. We should not be attacking the artist. We don't own Pokemon. Look, I got this hat. Look, this hat, you know, it says Pokemon. It's an official merch thing. And it comes from the Pokemon company. Copyright, yeah. They own Pokemon, okay? We don't. It is not on us to protect this sacred IP. We need to let the legal process play out. Now, what I will note, however, is there are some people that seem to be additionally concerned because they feel like all of these pals, or at least most of them, might have been made with AI-generated models. So AI-generated art. And AI has its uses and a lot of people do use it in various things. This entire YouTube platform is rammed by AI. AI is something that has added functionality and has helped progress certain things out in the world. But there's always that negative side where people are concerned about artists losing jobs. AI-generated art isn't original, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? There's all these concerns around AI. And this is because, like, why do people think this? Well, the guy who rungs the studio, which I believe is called Pocket Something, I can't remember, he has in the past done interviews where he talked about how excited he is for the future of AI. And they've actually created a game already that used generative AI. So it is something that they've dabbled in. So then people took that dabbling to jump to a conclusion that they're using AI to generate these pals when there actually isn't any direct evidence of that being the case. So I've got to be careful about making accusations just because we're angry, rather than making accusations because there's actually truth. We don't know, and there's no definitive way that we can find out right now. That would require, well, the legal process, and that is something the Pokemon company is dealing with. Now, one thing with AI generated art, and just AI in general, is one thing I've heard that people are concerned the most about are a bunch of artists losing their jobs. And this is like a controversial point out there about artists losing their jobs. And I don't know all the ins and outs of being a professional artist and animator and all of that and AI coming in to take your jobs but what I do know is technology advances over the years have led to a lot less workers needed in certain fields. If you guys actually don't remember, there was this whole industrial revolution at some point and assembly lines were created and assembly lines actually lowered the need for more and more employees working in factories. And you were making some pretty good money at times working in some of these factories. Even today we use robotics and a whole bunch of stuff in factories to where we don't necessarily need 10,000 employees in a given factory anymore. You can have maybe 100 just making sure the machines are running at their best and doing maintenance. So I find it quite fascinating that for some reason we don't get super, super angry about all these technological advances in other fields that are leading to not needing as many jobs and other people losing jobs. And we're getting really angry about AI in the video game field and just outraging because it's leading to having to need less programmers, having to need less artists and having, that's what technology does. It advances and then we need less people. You know, we also need less people out there plowing fields to grow crops than we used to need. What happens is the workforce has to shift to areas where there are other needs. You know, this is just one I throw out there because this is just one of those workforces that's always in need. We're always short on doctors and nurses. Completely short, despite all the technology out there, we are always short on doctors, nurses, surgeons, et cetera. And we aren't really getting a massive increase in influx, you know, into those fields. Caregivers, another example, you know, the ones at CNAs and all that below nurses, we need more workers there. Factually, we need a stronger workforce in that area but people aren't really aspiring to do that. They're aspiring for these dream jobs that unfortunately, you know what? The workforce is shifting. Again, this isn't me just saying, I support everything that has to do with AI and that, you know, the AI generated art that's literally stealing art assets from real artists. You know, I get that. I am against that sort of stuff. I'm just kind of noting that all this craze about AI and it costing people jobs, I mean, people weren't really complaining when McDonald's was introducing kiosks where you can make orders and you don't have to have as many cashiers anymore at McDonald's to take people's orders. Like, people didn't complain about that. How about the fact that Walmart and all these other places now have self-checkouts? Self-checkouts cost people jobs. There's factually less cashiers at all these stores because of self-checkouts. Again, this is just something that happens. It's natural. It's normal. Reality is budgets have been overinflated on games. It's very hard for AAA games to even make a profit today in some fields. Obviously, certain IPs call Judy Zelda, Pokemon Mark. Like, yeah, the big IPs are fine, but you know, to break into that field is harder than ever and finding ways to take advantage of those AI tools to make better products isn't a bad thing. It just, you know, there can be a point where it's maybe a little too much and what those limits are, honestly, that's up to the unions and the legal system and all that to determine where the limits should exist for how much AI can influence certain things. Just like the government got involved for how, you know, all the regulations around robots and factories and assembly lines and even self-checkouts. There's regulations around that as well. So that's not for us to determine. I just wanna throw out there that while I do feel bad about people losing jobs and I know that this is in a crisis in the video game industry that I don't think is actually directly related to AI, the sheer number of layoffs I don't think is AI related. I think it's budgetary reasons, things not making that much money, blah, blah, blah. Xbox Today just announced 1,900 employees in their gaming divisions across the entirety of Xbox being laid off, including their entire physical game division, which are the people that turn their games into physical products to put on store shelves, writings on the wall there. It's just sort of sad that that's happening, but I don't think that that's happening because of AI. Why are physical games going away for Xbox? Well, they launched Game Pass. Also, Xbox isn't selling very well. So if Xbox isn't selling very well, there's less consumers you can buy in physical games. At some point, you just cut your losses because it's just not worth producing physical copies of games anymore. So there's a whole lot that goes behind this that isn't just AI. And a lot of this is because a lot of consumers were overspending during the pandemic for all this in-home entertainment and now that the world is returning to normal, people aren't spending as much on in-home entertainment. And as such, all these budgets that got crazy and out of place and was hiring like nuts and trying all these different game concepts, now there's just not as many consumers there as there was in 2020 and 2021. So it's quite fascinating that I think a lot of this just came from overspending in the first place and over hiring in the first place. I prefer Nintendo's approach where they don't go out and hire thousands of employees for a few projects. They hire five, 10, a dozen employees at once and then they keep them on permanently. I think that is a much better approach and could solve a lot of issues, but that's just unfortunately not the way a lot of these Western companies run. That being said, I mentioned that there was another story for Pokemon and I wanna dive into this quick because it is fascinating and since we don't talk a lot of Pokemon on my channel, I wanna make sure that we get to some of the good news around Pokemon itself. And that's as Andy Robinson came on here and says, from what I've heard, the Pokemon company has taken the response to Scarlet and Violet seriously and is acting on it for future production. Now again, we don't know what this acting upon it means. We don't know if they're gonna just have less bugs, if it's gonna be much more graphically pleasing. Are they gonna take more time to make the next generation of Pokemon? That is something we obviously don't know, but according to Andy Robinson, they have taken it seriously. All we can do is hope because like the proof is gonna be in the pudding. Will the next Pokemon game actually care about how well the game is polished? That's a big thing and not just about new ideas and new features. How about polish? Polish, I mean literally, tears of the kingdom had an entire year of polish. Care about how like great your game's final product is, not just in terms of gameplay, but bugs and user experience, right? I'm just saying, I hope they're given the time to do it and the next, I'm not gonna say the next Pokemon game like this year, but let's go with the next generation, the new generation, whenever, if it's next year, the year after, except whenever the next generation Pokemon game arrives, that's when we're gonna find out if the proof is in the pudding and the Pokemon company actually listened or if they're just talking out their ass, frankly. Thank you guys so much for being here. I am Tanner Roblojans from Nintendo Prime. Let me know your thoughts on all of this down below. Again, I'm gonna avoid you talking about Power World because I just think it's kind of a controversial topic and also not our problem. I'll catch you guys in the next video.