Pokémon TCG Pocket will change card art after plagiarism accusations

Artwork from Pokémon TCG Pocket’s Wisdom of Sea and Sky enlargement that has present been removed from the game. | Image: The Pokémon Company

While you tin present commencement collecting Pokémon TCG Pocket‘s Johto-themed Wisdom of Sea and Sky expansion, 2 of the set’s rarest cards are being changed successful effect to concerns astir creation theft.

Soon aft dataminers began posting images of Wisdom of Sea and Sky’s cards connected Tuesday, Chinese creator lanjiujiu took to their X relationship with questions astir Pokémon TCG Pocket using illustrations that seemed to person been traced from their ain work. In particular, lanjiujiu pointed to Wisdom of Sea and Sky’s immersive Ho-Oh paper drawn by Sie Nanahara, a Japanese illustrator who has antecedently produced a fig of creation pieces for The Pokémon Company. 

Pokémon TCG Pocket‘s archetypal immersive Ho-Oh paper bore a fig of ocular similarities to a portion of creation lanjiujiu was commissioned to exemplify successful 2021. lanjiujiu did not specify who primitively commissioned them, but their creation intelligibly served arsenic the notation for a resin statue sold by PC House Studio, a institution that makes unlicensed collectibles. 

As Polygon notes, The Pokémon Company has made clear that, erstwhile fans administer creation featuring immoderate of the company’s copyrighted intelligence property, they are agreeing to “a royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license” that gives it the close to “use, transmit, copy, modify, and show Fan Art (and its derivatives) for immoderate purpose.” Legally speaking, that means TPC would person been successful the wide to support the immersive Ho-Oh arsenic is. But past night, the institution announced that it present plans to update the paper arsenic good arsenic Wisdom of Sea and Sky’s immersive Lugia, which besides featured the Ho-Oh creation arsenic portion of a abbreviated animation.

“We are besides conducting a broader probe to guarantee nary akin issues beryllium elsewhere successful the game,” TPC said successful a connection posted to X. “To each our players who person been looking guardant to this expansion, and to the talented illustrators who bring the Pokémon satellite to life, we profoundly apologize for immoderate inconvenience this has caused. We instrumentality this substance precise earnestly and are committed to strengthening our prime power processes to forestall this from happening again.”

The Pokémon TCG Pocket situation is the latest lawsuit of a fashionable mobile paper crippled getting successful blistery h2o for utilizing instrumentality creation without contacting the archetypal artist. Earlier this year, Marvel Snap faced akin accusations connected 2 abstracted occasions — erstwhile regarding a pixel variant M’Baku card that resembled an illustration by instrumentality creator Jason Kiantoro, and different involving a paper of the Ancient One that borrowed visual elements from Kamen Rider Wizard.

In the second instance, Marvel Snap simply changed a fewer details alternatively than releasing an wholly caller card. It’s not wide erstwhile Pokémon TCG Pocket will update Wisdom of Sea and Sky’s immersive cards, but if you hap to propulsion them now, you’ll beryllium greeted with a container that says “new creation coming soon.”