Pokémon TCG Pocket Updates Card Art Following Plagiarism Allegations

That sucks. Glad they’re pulling it.

Also I bet 10 bucks on people defending this because TPC owns the franchise and IP.

Some poor intern is getting sacked cause they somehow introduced fan art to a reference sheet.

Ooh someones getting fired for this lol. It's one thing to use other art as inspiration, but this looks like a pretty clear rip off, possibly even traced too. Big yikes, good on TPC for taking it down

@darkswabber You absolutely know there are hardcore TPC glazers that will defend anything they do lol

For those wondering why IP holders issue cease and desists on popular fan creations...

This is why.

The unfortunate reality is that official developers/artists cannot create anything that too closely resembles fan art, even if said fan art is an infringement on their IP in the first place.

Though I'd be interested to know whether this was a coincidence or a case of fan art being provided as a reference to the official artist, and if the latter is the case, then that's certainly a Coalossal Blaziken-up.

I guess this would help the palworld legal case as the Pokémon company themselves are doing exactly the same thing… oh well

If someone is making fan art of a franchise, they're technically borrowing someone else's franchise without making any money on it, which is fine. But they should expect the company to use their own franchise in any way they please, which means they can obviously do stuff similar to the fan art. And also... seriously? Complaining about official art having a similar flight pose to some random fan art from years ago? Does it really matter? Are we trademarking freaking flight poses of all things? If too many things get trademarked, we can all kiss artistic expression goodbye. My apologies for being just a little negative about this, but my future dream is to be a fantasy author, so I really like artistic expression.

Pulling on of those cards was definitely a shock to me this morning lol. Good they’re addressing it though, but I want my immersive soon!

What a ridiculous situation this is.... I mean how can it be that the company that makes something should be scared that the law won't protect them from doing what they like with their creations.
I guess this will lead to stronger action being taken to avoid this in the future.

It’s not accusations at this point when they themselves have admitted to it and explained exactly how it happened.
@Shaw_Brothers
Unless there are tons of examples of them doing this then no there’s no chance it has any effect on that.

I pulled the card last night and had the biggest laugh. A shame a situation like this happens, but happy they are doing something. Part of me feels like studios should be able to use fan art. Otherwise, just makes things a nightmare to design and make for us fans.

One would think they could draw their own Pokémon how every they want.

@darkswabber you got your $10! Insane to complain about your art being used when you don't own the property you are drawing.

@SillyG This is exactly why we may never see another Eevee evolution. The more Eevee's they release the more the fandom spam ideas for the remaining elements. It makes it increasingly harder for the artist's who have to design Pokemon to actually design one that isn't close to someone's fan art.

It's also why people moaned when we got a steel dragon Pokemon and it was a skyscraper. But they have to resort to creating something so left field because there are sooooooo many Dragon Steel type fan art out there.

I kid you not... I open the app, see that the new packs are there. Start by choosing a Lugia pack, open it, get the Lugia 3 stars! But I was so confused to see exactly what is shown in the article. Waiting for the update just to see the animation!

Not the first time that developers have accidentally used fan art thinking it was official. And it will not be the last either.

Sounds like an honest mistake all around and being handled appropriately. The placeholder images are pretty funny though, when these are the day 1 chase cards for everyone opening the new packs.

They should have temporarily replaced these with Missingno.

Palworld has entered the chat.

It actually is wild to see people defending plagiarism when even the pokemon company didn't want it.

Ya I pulled the Lugia card that has the placeholder text.

Yea, I pulled the Ho-oh card this morning. I guess this explains that.

@dew12333 So in your book corporations should be allowed to plagiarize their own fanbase. Jesus that's absolutely insane, can't wait for the official sequel to 1984 from Motorboater69's Wattpad account.

@koopababble Some of these clowns are actually ridiculous.

@ShieldHero The image is very obviously traced. I think the only visible difference is how far up the green patch is on the neck, but the wings (and everything else) are exactly the same dimension at all lines. People who value creativity, especially artists, take pride in creating something. Not in copying. If you want to be an author you can take inspiration from as many things as you want, but I doubt you would copy and paste whole pages out of another book. Right?

Of course people are somehow managing to turn, "TPC just flat out stole someone's art," into, "And this is why fans shouldn't be allowed to create art." Of course. Absurd that people are somehow finding a way to defend this.

I still think it's really funny how fan art is pretty much already plagiarism, and then everyone gets all crazy when the actual company that invented the stuff, accidentally basis something off of the fan created art... Seems like this is the third or fourth story I've seen like this in the last 10 years and it's quite funny to me.

@Fiergala So in your book fans should be allowed to plagiarize the creators.

I just changed a couple of your words to show you have double standards.

@dew12333 Of course not, what. You think every single fan drawing of Pikachu is plagiarism? No offense man but it shows you have no understanding of how art or inspiration actually works, literally every artist including "original" ones started by tracing, you're advocating for N pulling down a 10-year-old's Pikachu drawing like the dystopian nightmare of Hypnospace Outlaw where you mass-copyright-claim a primary school's art competition lol. E: Oh f*ck I found unlicensed fan art of Tails, someone pull down this monstrosity.

@Fiergala Can you try and at least disagree with someone without being rude.

And I am really sorry that I only appreciate art from the creators rather than depictions from fans.

@dew12333 So you'd legit endorse pulling down that adorable fanart, man I bet the artist would find that pretty rude.

@Fiergala So does the law, otherwise there wouldn't be a legitimate reason to take it down. Maybe your issue is with the law and not me....

@dew12333 https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/what-is-fair-use/ You're a Brit but "sadly" the US owns the vast majority of digital data centers including almost certainly the site of that fan art. https://cc-techgroup.com/how-many-data-centers-are-in-the-us/ Feel free to take the "Amino app" to court for copyright infringement though. E: Also I don't have any problem with you on a personal level if that isn't clear, but facts are facts.

Certainly not what I was expecting.

That's great and all, but isn't this what AIs company do on an industrial level, with billions of artworks stolen and reused ?

Seems a little odd they also redesigned Lugia but better safe than sorry and think both of these look better than what they replaced anyway.

Sweet, the new art is actually a big improvement and I coincidentally just pulled the Lugia to join my Ho-Oh right after they were added. I have all of the immersives now except Buzzwole and Eevee, I wish we could trade them.

It’s been a good run. I’ll miss you “NEW ART COMING SOON”

@Ulysses they can, it's traced, its not similar, it's identical

New art is better anyway so I guess it's a win win overall.

Although it's because of crap like this that apparently Pokemon has actually decided against certain designs for Pokemon simply because fan artists already did them.

Meaning they could just use the design we all clearly want, but because some fan artist might actually pick a fight over it they don't. Which is dumb and they should be able to just use whatever is best.

@Tasuki I mean they held themselves to the same standards by removing the art immediately after discovering it.

The people they end up taking legal action against are always defiant and either deny or continue infringing even after being warned.

If the people/company Nintendo sued acted like The Pokemon Company did here. They'd stop whatever they were doing and never get sued in the first place

If they acted like Gary Bowser or Pocketpair the old art would still be in the game right now, and they'd be denying it was copied from fanart. They wouldn't be making new art and issuing a statement confirming the old art was from unofficial material.

@Bobb Doesn't seem like that is even a particularly unique phenomenon, there's Persona 4 fanart in the data for Persona 5 for some reason.

See also how in the original release of Ultimate the Masked Man's Spirit was a fan edit from DeviantArt instead of the actual original sprite.

Most artists I know started their careers by making fan art. In fact, many of the younger generation of Pokemon Company workers crew up with Pokemon media and made tons of fan art before getting a job from Pokemon Company.

This comment section has been wild. I'm glad there are still people here on NL that don't just blame fans for drawing fan art.

So what's the answer here? Issue a cease and desist for every awesome fan art of Pokemon because Game Freak is envious by their lack of creativity?

@Fiergala I had wanted to reply to you previously but was too busy at the time. I understood your last comment and just wanted to make mine clearer.
Firstly I 100% have no issues with anyone drawing whatever they want, the area that complicates this for me is the law. And then solicitors etc. who cloud the lines of legality. This then in turn makes difficult situations for companies, very similar to this tcg card. Neither the drawer of the art in question or the Pokémon company had any issues with either side, however because of the law it then impacted what the Pokémon company felt they should do.
This is often the case and it annoys me to think that if I came up with a character that I would have to be careful because of law. When really you should have license to do what you want with what you created.
As I say my issue is with a stupid law that makes the two sides look like they dislike each other when I really don’t think they do. So when a company looks over zealous towards some art, like some others would do, I don’t see the issue the same.

@dew12333 I appreciate the response and hope I wasn't too harsh. I do understand the issue is more complicated than I and some other people might make it sound, not even just from N's pressure but their solicitors and stockholders. At the end of the day though, it's an emotional reaction, but I'll always stand up for fan artists, perhaps because my father was an amateur artist, who often traced from album covers at the time but only as a collage of a greater whole. The Internet didn't exist back then, but if it did, I imagine he would've posted it online, and I would hope the feedback would've allowed him to properly improve as an artist, instead of being pulled down for copyright infringement. I personally think, especially in the modern AI world, it's more important than ever for actual artists to learn from each other, which often objectively includes tracing. But that's all my opinion of course.

Anyway, the outcome here seems to be the best for all involved. The Pokemon gets a cool new pose and official artwork without infringing on the original fan art, all is good by me